Author Archives: Mage Mistress
This Was A Triumph!
I’m always nervous going into a convention game. Call it “stage fright” if you like. With my regular troupe I pretty much know what I’m getting into, but GMing a group of players you’ve never met before… well it can be a bit daunting. I have all my story lines ready, all the clues that they can find are plotted out, the PCs are fully statted and given some personality nudges, but no amount of planning on the GMs part can determine what kind of players you get at your table.
RetCon, once again you did not disappoint!
Hunter: the Vigil: I had three modules to run this weekend, and the schedule had me starting off with my “Hunter: the Vigil” adventure: Quit While You’re Ahead. I had decided to do something slightly different this year and set my modules in the same game world as the adventure I ran for RetCon 2010, Asylum. In that adventure, the players are a film crew hired to shoot the pilot for a paranormal TV series called “Truly Terrifying Tales”. The crew arrives on the scene, shit gets real, and hilarity ensues! For this year, I decided to look at those same characters after the events of Asylum. They have been through that experience, and now they are aware of the supernatural. Their footage (and that first group of players came away with incredible footage!) was not taken as seriously as they would have liked and it is instead being turned into a low budget horror movie, but life goes on. They have now been hired to shoot a series called “50 Shades of Play” about the wonderful world of strippers. Since this is the World of Darkness they will be crossing paths with the supernatural once again! I was in a “1950’s Horror Movie Theater” state of mind, and so I decided to base this particular scenario on the film “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”.
Highlight of the Hunter Session for the GM: The film crew’s decision to interview the decapitated head! I had given myself a detailed run-down of how a poor young woman mere months from her wedding day became a severed head attached to a dialysis machine and a respirator waiting for her husband-to-be to arrive with a suitably attractive replacement body for her (because a dialysis machine wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as a stripper body on the wedding night), but never in my wildest dreams did I dare to think that I would actually get to play out an interview with her! She was, as one would expect under the circumstances, stark raving mad and the film crew was able to convince her that they wanted to interview her fiance because what he was about to achieve was too momentous to not be preserved for posterity. I was expecting a big fight scene with the group of Hunters, a bunch of animated headless corpses being controlled by the will of the severed head, some animal mix-ups that the good doctor was practicing on before he got to human experimentation… you know, good times! Instead not a single drop of blood was shed, two strippers were saved (one pre-surgery and one post-surgery), and whoever suppressed that last bit of footage these guys got is gonna have even more fun with this one! It’s a wrap people!
World of Darkness – Innocents: I had never run this system before. In fact, I’d never even played this system before. The basics are all typical “World of Darkness” which I have years of experience with, but Innocents does have some differences. For the record, I greatly prefer “Assets/Faults” over “Virtues/Vices”.
This particular group of 12 year olds had just been dropped off at their new boarding school by their disgustingly wealthy families. Naturally the school has a diabolical plan for these poor youngsters. The kids are all miscreants. They are little con-artists, hackers, pranksters, thieves, bullies, and partiers. Their parents really don’t feel like putting up with them, so they are willing to pay this school ludicrous sums of money to turn these kids into model citizens. The school has unsurpassed results! This is mostly owing to the fact that they are removing the kids’ souls from their bodies and replacing them with the souls of disgustingly wealthy old people who aren’t quite ready to die yet. Naturally, these disgustingly wealthy old people pay an exorbitant fee to the school for this service, so the school wins on both sides of this transaction. The old people are young again. The families get well behaved and respectable heirs… everybody wins! Except the kids of course. The kids pretty much loose.
Highlight of the Innocents Session for the GM: The person playing the party-girl decided to pull out all the stops this game! That child coached her classmates into milking the nurse’s office for every last ibuprofen they could get, scored all the mouthwash on the floor to mix cocktails with, and had tears of laughter rolling down my face pretty much the whole game. This was a tough act to keep up with, but when my con-artist (played by the only person at the table that I knew before the game started: Aenaiyah) asked the group if someone could possibly create a diversion “like, if the nurse thinks someone has a back injury they won’t want to move the person so they’ll have to come to you!”, and my bully replied “I think something can be arranged” I knew no good would come of it. I had given him the fault “cruel”.
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.
Sadly one of the players wound up really needing to leave by 11pm, whereas I had been scaling things to reach a story milestone at 11pm (either an escape attempt or the players stocking up for a fight with the administration… or both!) such that we could end by 12am – the scheduled session end-time. As a result the ending of the story was more rushed than I had wanted it to be. Instead of having school security snag the kids attempting to escape the grounds and drag them back to perform the soul-swapping ritual early, I decided to simply have them chased by dogs and let them escape if they could climb up the fence fast enough. A fight simply would have taken too long. The party girl decided that she was too scared to leave, but don’t fret. I’m sure the administrators treated her very well and gave her all the pain killers her little heart could desire right up until the big moment.
Mage: the Awakening: This session was also tied to the Asylum session that I ran during RetCon 2010. You see, that film crew escaped with all that awesome footage of supernatural creepiness, and somebody has to suppress it and keep supernatural baddies in check. Enter the Mages.
While the Guardian of the Veil Mastigos Narsil from my campaign world deals with the film crew, and Gladmring, the NYC Head of the Adamantine Arrow, is dealing with some horrors stumbled upon by the campaign Mages, someone needs to find out what drove that film crew from the Asylum grounds, and deal with it. According to a well placed source, the problem appears to be zombies. It’s time to send in the B Team.
Highlight of the Mage Session for the GM: I completely expected my favorite moments of this session to involve the use of Post-Cognition. This seemed even more likely when two of the players who played Asylum at RetCon 2010 signed up for the game, since it was their run through that I had based this scenario on. (A later run-through saw a very… different… outcome.) While describing the events of the zombie-raising ritual as seen by a Mage using Post-Cognition was indeed amusing (and yes, I decided that the spell granted a much longer vision than it normally does for purposes of hilarity) it actually turned out to be not my favorite part of the session after all. The best part: My Very First TPK!
Making a Note Here: Huge Success!
How did this happen you ask? Paradox. When I asked the players if they would like to mitigate their paradox rolls, and started to explain how they could do that, they tapped their chins and said “go ahead… right here… I can take it!” And so I rolled. And I got successes. And it was good. And had the Moros Mage not turned himself into a zombie-magnet so that they wouldn’t need to bother looking for the zombies they might have even survived. Had any of them thought to end the scene by turning off that spell and running into the nearby crematorium the adventure may have continued. Had, when one of them did think of ending the scene by running into the crematorium, they actually done that and ended the scene I might not have had nearly as much fun as I did. But these guys, they told me to bring it. And verily, it was brought! The Thyrsus Mage (aka: the healer) was not in play, and the Moros Mage was looking a little beat up. As a result my Acanthus Mage asks if he can speed up time in a bubble around the injured Moros Mage so that enough time will pass for his bashing damage to heal. Gotta love those Acanthus Mages, am I right?! So, being a sick and evil GM, I say of course you can do that, but it will be vulgar you know. It will be 6 glorious dice worth of vulgar.
“Are you sure you want to do this?“, asks the GM.
“Kick me in the Jimmy.”, says he.
And I roll.
And I roll a Temporal Anomaly.
And the radius of this anomaly shall be 80 yards.
And the players tell me: Don’t hold back. Enjoy it.
And enjoy it I do!
The Moros becomes a 2 year old. The Acanthus becomes an 86 year old. The Obrimos is suddenly an awkward teenager. The 2 year old Moros Mage is still attracting zombies from all over the site, and he’s what’s for dinner in no time at all. The first round of attacks leaves him with one hit point, which leaves him wanting his teddy bear, which makes him think it’s a great idea if the nearest thing to him would happen to turn into a teddy bear, which turns the Acanthus Mage into a teddy bear.
The Acanthus Mage reflexively attempts a Shifting Sands spell to prevent this whole turn events by preventing himself from casting that accursed time bubble in the first place, but he’s in the middle of a temporal anomaly and only gets one success. I rule that he arrives just in time to see a version of himself turn into a teddy bear but whether it’s past-him seeing future-him turn into a teddy bear on arrival, or future-him watching past-him turn into a teddy bear is far too confusing for me to be sure of.
Next round ZOMBIE BABY! Because the 2 year old Moros Mage was killed by a bite attack he turns into a zombie, but is quickly dispatched by his erstwhile friends. One down, two to go.
The Acanthus Mage manages to successfully cast Acceleration on his teenaged Obrimos companion, who in turn tries to convince the Acanthus to get the hell out of Dodge and report back on what’s happening. The Acanthus does not do this. The Obrimos rushes in and fights off several zombies before being turned himself, and then it’s player against player as Zombie Obrimos tries to eat the Acanthus’s brains!*
More zombies are pouring in… Zombie Obrimos is doing his best to chow down on the Acanthus… and ultimately he sucks out that final Acanthus hit-point! The GM wins!
The GM WINS!!
*Clearly only enough to be an appetizer. He’s an Acanthus after all.
Not The Post You’re Looking For…
Well, it seems a certain Acanthus Mage has managed to affect my blog stream. I know, I know, you think I’m talking about Aenaiyah, but actually this time it isn’t her fault… maybe.
You can feel free to blame her anyway though! (I’m sure she had something to do with it.)
I believe it has something to do with this past weekend’s Temporal Anomaly, which I was planning on telling you all about tomorrow.
All will be revealed at 10am Friday.
Stay Tuned for “This Was A Triumph!” A RetCon 2012 recap.
Innocents Musings
I’ve written my first module for World of Darkness: Innocents! I haven’t run it just yet, I’ll be doing that at RetCon on Saturday night, but if how much I’ve enjoyed writing it is any indication everyone will be pleased.
One of the things that struck me as slightly odd about Innocents is that it doesn’t use the Virtue/Vice system. Honestly, I can’t imagine why since the entire rest of the World of Darkness line does. The idea of Innocents is that the main protagonists are children (boogie man in the closet kind of stories) but it’s hardly as though children don’t have Virtues and Vices. Children can be every bit as Wrathful, Envious, Proud, Hopeful, Prudent, and Charitable as adults can. So why not Virtues and Vices? Why does Innocents switch to “Assets and Faults”?
I have no answer for that question, and here is another question I have no answer for: why wasn’t “Assets and Faults” made the universal personality trait for all of the World of Darkness instead? Now that I’ve seen the system in Innocents I can’t understand why it wasn’t used across the gamut.
I’d guess that most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins that Vices are based on, and of course the Virtues are all familiar enough as well. The thing is, while Envy is simple enough as a concept, to covet that which someone else has, it’s a little less easy to role play effectively. Envy is a subtle inner conflict that doesn’t always play well at the game table.
In contrast, the Assets and Faults of the Innocents system are all concrete and easy to communicate at the table. They are also well balanced, so that for the various positive qualities a character might have, there are opposing negative qualities: Bravery and Cowardice, Kindness and Cruelty, Generosity and Greed. As for the replenishment of Willpower Points, they work exactly the same way as their counterparts in the other systems: the indulgence of a Fault replenishes one point of Willpower, and the portrayal of an Asset replenishes Willpower to the character’s maximum.
In the Virtues and Vices system I tend to stick to a core few that I use to make pre-generated characters for convention modules because I want to be sure that players with no experience won’t have a hard time portraying the various characters as written on the sheets. I didn’t have that problem at all writing characters in Innocents. I didn’t see any particular quality that wouldn’t be fun to portray at the table. They all feel like they will work well in a group dynamic.
Of course, I’ll know more after Saturday night’s session!
I Peed My Pants!
Previously on Mage the Awakening…
The Mages tracked a Banisher to an abandoned monastery on Staten Island. How, you ask? Rex’s skill with the Matter Arcana allowed him to isolate a sliver of metal from the iron murder shovel embedded in the flesh of one of the victims. At that point Damien cast a Space spell to discover the location of the rest of the shovel, using the sliver as a focus. This particular shovel dated back to a time when the monks at the site forged their own tools, which made it different than your typical modern shovel, though they did turn up two sizable sources of the same iron at the site. One source was about 2 stories above ground, the other roughly as far below ground, and smaller than the first.
Upon arrival the Mages find all of the things you would expect to find at a long abandoned monastery. They wander through a small religious shop where they get their grubby paws on some blessed items (useful in case there might happen to be some ghosts nearby), a chapel with some blessed Bibles, and a ladder leading up to the bell tower. The bell is the first and larger source of iron at the site.
Now, being a GM I know that if I put a rope next to a bell and there are seven players at my table SOMEBODY is going to pull that rope. Who could resist? When I’m a player character, I can’t. To sweeten the temptation I made sure to point out the location of a small plaque next to the ladder that leads up to the tower which reads: “Faustus Upstairs Up Ladder In Tower.” I promise you I did not make that up. I actually found that on not one but two of the websites I visited while researching the very real abandoned monastery St Augustine’s! How could I not include it? I was obligated. It was a sacred duty. Who am I to drop the ball on the performance of sacred duty?
And so, of course, Riff-Raff pulls the rope. Good old Riff-Raff. I knew I could count on you.
Then the demon attacks. Now Nokoni had been using his Spirit sight to scrutinize the area, but Faustus (I had to name him Faustus under the circumstances) was discorporated until someone rang the bell because that is one of his abilities. So as soon as Riff-Raff pulled that rope several things happened:
- The peal of the bell nearly deafened several characters
- Faustus materialized
- Nokoni’s Spirit senses started tingling
- The party was attacked by a swarm of bats
Put another way: shit got real.
It was an epic battle. Aren’t they all? Faustus has the ability to instill fear in people, causing Damien to flee the area for multiple rounds almost immediately. He can not create fear in anyone who rings the bell, so Riff-Raff was off the hook on that one. Faustus can create more bats. Faustus can freeze someone in place – paralyzed with fear. All of this is pretty fun for me, but my personal favorite of Fausty-baby’s abilities is the Desiccation Numina. This particular Numina drains the fluid from its victim. Due to the nature of my dear little demon’s abilities I decided that this took on the very particular form of the character losing bladder control, and taking bashing damage in the process. And who do we think I targeted with this ability?
Some days I love this job.
Next Week on “Mage: the Awakening”:
Aenaiyah calls Damien back to the monastery with a desperate request. Damien is almost murdered by a cabal-mate when he arrives on the scene with ass-less chaps.
Session Scheming
Tonight on #RPGChat* we were discussing the virtues of session planning, and how some of us like to go about it. This feels appropriate to me for two main reasons, this first of which is that I have a new chapter starting up soon for the Mages (the blog is behind the campaign’s timeline but we’ll catch up to them eventually!), and the second being that RetCon is rapidly approaching and I’m in convention game planning hell.
For reasons too asinine to go into here I committed to running three brand new adventures this year: Innocents, Hunter, and Mage. I have a vague idea of what these sessions will be, which you can check out for yourself if you click through the links. RetCon is in two weeks.
No good can come of this.
There is a lot of flying by the seat of my pants that I do with the Mage campaign. With seven players tossing around god-like powers I’m pretty much forced to. My convention games however are much more solidly put together. There are packets with background info on the characters and their basic attitudes toward life and the current situation to be put together. Naturally the characters all need to be fully statted. The packets also include a brief explanation of certain concepts so that if I have people who are new to the system they will know how things work, for example how the Virtue/Vice selections come into play. I am absolutely a fan of having things to hand out during game sessions and that all has to be put together too.
I like to give my convention players as much of a sandbox environment as I can, but the fact is that I’m running for people I don’t know and may or may not see again. This means coming up with specific goals for them that will keep them in a reasonably predictable area, and then giving them free reign to interact with that environment. I also love to give them free reign to interact with each other. This is where those character “attitudes” come into play. I make every effort to give the PCs things to argue about. Some will totally believe in the presence of the supernatural all around them, while others are skeptics. Some will be bright eyed, bushy tailed, and enthusiastic to learn something new from their team mates; while some of those team mates are just hoping they haven’t been saddled with some brown-nosing, over achieving, suck up. of course having a “Brainey Smurf” around is always good for inter-group tensions. When folks play up those personality types hilarity is sure to ensue.
The story has to be short enough to run in the time allowed, but it can’t run too short either. To that end, I try to plan out things that will be fun for the players to do yet aren’t necessary for the storyline to make sense. I plot out filler scenes. The trick is to make sure they don’t feel like filler scenes. I always give myself a way to trigger the finale in case they don’t get through all of the ‘necessary events’ with at least 30 minutes left in the session. I don’t want things to feel forced, but more importantly I don’t want the players to leave the table feeling incomplete. That isn’t good for anybody.
So, basically, I still have a lot of writing to do, and I have a rapidly diminishing amount of time left in which to do it. It’s all good though. I have my trusty coffee and the day off. I can do this! So, if you’re in the New York area I urge you to check out RetCon this year. There will be chances for me to kill your character! There will be prizes! There will be cake!!**
*It’s a Twitter thing, and if you aren’t there at 9pm on Thursday nights then… well… you should be there is all I’m tryin’ to say!
**The cake is a lie.
Mage Mistress 