During our play session this week, we took the opportunity to finally try something we’ve wanted to do since we had most of the old gaming group fall away back in September. One of these gamers had scheduling issues — he works in Los Alamos on the days we usually have open to game. He lives in Santa Fe. We play in Albuquerque. If he were to leave for the game after work, he would have 93 miles during rush hour traffic to get here. It’s a two hour run at the best of times, and another 45 minutes to an hour to get home.
In other words, not doable.
We’d thought about trying to link this player and the one who GTT (Gone To Texas, for you non-history fans) to the group through the internet. During test runs in September, we’d found Facetime was the most stable platform, but couldn’t handle more than two callers; Skype could do multiple callers, if one of you popped for the ability, and was generally stable if not as much so as Facetime; and we tried Google Hangout, which could handle multiple callers and was mostly stable, but got increasingly twitchy over time.
Since we were only bringing one person in on the video call, and only one of us had Facetime, we went with Skype. The result was much better than I’d hoped for. We got the call-in about 1900 hours and game ran until 2230 hours. The call audio quality was good, although we’ve decided it would be a good idea to rig the iPad we were using into its bluetooth speakers next time. Video quality was patchy — good for the first hour or so, but it steadily degraded until the remote player had to kill his video feed for about 45 minutes. During a break, he called back in and the video was good again.
He has a few issues receiving video from us at first, but it cleared up after we hung up and recalled at the start of the session. He had a few problems tracking the crosstalk on the table at one point, but otherwise was able to feel part of the action and not terribly disconnected.
Here were the observations:
1) Positioning is very important. Depending on the webcam, laptop, or in this case, an iPad, you want to find a place where the camera can see the entire group and can adequately pick up the conversations.
Just as important is the GM’s position. I was seated to one side of the table — iPad at one end, players arrayed in front of me of to the opposite side of the iPad, and occasionally I would lose track of what the video caller or the player opposite of him was doing/saying. Better to position yourself so the players and teleconferenced person are in front of you; be at the head of the table, if using one, with the teleconferenced player at the other end of the room, so you can see everyone. this cuts down on the chance that you favor one side of the room or the other. I managed to avoid ignoring the video caller over the rest of the people in the room but I had to keep it in mind throughout the night.
2) Venue. Try to avoid big. empty rooms with lots of hard objects. This bounces the sound more, and the echo effect can make it difficult for the video caller. You want something big enough to allow the camera to pick up all the players, but small enough not to jigger with the audio.
3) Equipment: Screen size: we were running the conference on an iPad — an 11″ screen. It was good enough we could see the player just fine in the space we were working with. A bigger room, or more myopic players might like something larger. A good microphone and speaker are important when doing a conference call with a room full of players. I mentioned the bluetooth speaker to get past the reflected noise of the host’s kitchen and the generally crappy speaker of the iPad2 and later. If you have a TV and can connect the device running the video conference, the speakers and video should be more than enough to the purpose.
4) Coordination. As with tabletop gaming, coordination can be a real issue. This gets worse the more time zones you throw between the two sides of a call. This has prevented me from setting up a game with another gamer in Korea — 14 or 15 hours is a lot of time to work around; you’re in different days, much less times of day. Even a call home to Scotland is six hours offset. Keep this in mind, even for something like a single timezone. An hour in the evening can mean starting too early for someone, or ending a touch to late for another.
Overall, our experience was very positive, with two of the players and myself expressing the wish to continue with Skyping the player in, and the others being positive about the experience in general, but not so enthusiastic. They’re also not part of the group from last year, so that’s probably a reason.
Video conferencing is a great way to retain players who have moved away or for some reason can’t make the haul to game. Depending on the number you need to conference in will decide what service you want, but if it’s just a single player Facetime (if they have a Mac) and Skype seem to be the most stable. Google Hangout is great for multiple players, but our last test showed it to be twitchy. They may have improved it since them, and it included a plug-in dice roller, so there you go. Just attend to the tips above, and you should be able to bring in long lost friends or busy players.
We’ve been trying to recruit a few more players for our group of late. One of the draws was an interest in several for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game (hereafter MHR) — which I like tremendously. So last night, we took a crack at playing this game again. We last played MHR around September, before the collapse of the gaming group as people moved away, and one of those “lost” players was joining us via Skype (there will be a post on that either tonight or tomorrow.)
The game involved PARAGON, a Captain Marvel-esque corporate tool who has weather control, flight, lightning bolts, and is physically superhuman; PARADOX, a probability manipulator and teleporter who is part of a government agency studying supers; PARALLEL, a Multiple Man-esque character who is — other than the ability to make copies of himself — normal and subject of PARADOX’s studies; and Special Agent Garcia — a telepath and mind controller, who the players later named “the Psychiatrist” to keep the unintentional P-naming convention that cropped up.
The characters and situation are introduced: one of Parallel’s dupes has gone rogue, launching a one man –well, multiples of one man — war on Jump gangs along the Eastern Seaboard. Jump is a drug that can temporarily create superpowers in people, is highly psychologically addictive, and does damage to the user’s mental faculties over time; good stuff is usually stolen from military stocks, but awful Jump analogues are popular with middle-class and well-to-do drug users. We introduced Garcia doing a scan on PARALLEL to make sure he wasn’t connected to the drug violence. The two were then sent to Liberty City, Delaware (our fake metropolis for the game) to link up with PARAGON. PARADOX, the probability guy, joins the team to observe PARALLEL in action because he thinks the multiplying power is quantum-related.
While looking into the targets the dupe — who the police dub “Doppleganger” — might be targeting there was a big philosophical discussion on whether or not the dupes were “real people.” The police were horrified by the casualness of PARALLEL’s suggestion they either kill them, or he will reabsorb them (and their knowledge.) PARAGON is worried that the reabsorption process could damage PARALLEL’s mental state, if the dupes have been using Jump…and from past experiences, it’s entirely possible. In the process of explaining the mechanics of his power, PARALLEL spawns a dupe to have him “get coffee.” When the dup returns with coffee, he offers to help with the data analysis (giving him access to all the police data on the jump dealers in town), but he is not the same one (PARADOX uses his “Intuition” power to figure this out) and fails a pass & response test they’d put together to know PARALLEL from DOPPLEGANGER.
The fight ensued, with loads of dupes and action. There were a lot of 1s rolled and the doom pool grew quickly. There were a few things that cropped up quickly that needed to be addressed:
1) There’s an issue with scaling in the EFFECT rules. using the mechanics as they currently are, a normal person could conceivably hurt a Superman type if they had a big enough effect die (OM51 in the operations guide.) For instance, the One Man Mob power gives PARALLEL (or his dupes) a 3d8 to add to their dice pool and they get the same d10 Team affiliation die. The bad guys were thus able to use their d10 affiliation die to do stress to PARAGON, who has superhuman durability. Unlikely. Riffing off of the “Everyone Has Limits” rules at OM55, you could step back their effect to d8…still, this seemed unreasonable for the power level of Paragon. So a new house rule went into effect. If the power level is one level lower than the target durability, (say an Enhanced Strength of d8 vs. a character with a Superhuman Durability of d10) you step the die back one. If you are two or more levels below the target , you cannot inflict stress, but could inflict a complication on the character.
This should better reflect when a character like Daredevil goes up against Colossus. He’s not going to do anything to the man of steel unless he gets clever and targets his weaknesses. Much more likely, he will use his abilities to try and confuse, distract, or throw complications on Colossus.
2) There’s nothing to address a tie in effect dice. We had the dupes die on effect with one of the NPC cops. They didn’t fail, but they shouldn’t gain the full effect die in the opinion of the table…so we instituted another house rule: ties mean the attacker steps their effect back (in this case from a d8 to a d6.) If the attacker had gotten an extraordinary success (five over the reaction dice of the target), this wouldn’t have been an issue, since the that would have given them a step up to a d10 on the effect die.
3) Supporting NPCs — how should they be handled? We had a squad of six well-trained cops with the heroes. Rolling for each of them would have seriously tipped the focus from the heroes to the NPCs. I’ve decided to use them as a “mob” — in this case they would provide a 3d8 (well trained) support action to one of the heroes a round of play, and can use area attack.
This also played into an issue with me not paying attention to the One Man Mob powerset for the bad guys. I had them rolling once against the heroes with area attack effects, but the players were targeting individuals. We were rolling the dupes as individuals (using PARALLEL’s sheet as the basis for their die pools.) Problem: the dupes, who are still normals, were having a decided advantage over much more powerful players characters. I forgot to have them target the One Man Mob power, as per OM55. They should have been able to knock back the powerset (effectively knocking out the dupes) for every d10 of effect.
Otherwise, the game went well, with the players getting the hang of the mechanics over the course of the night. the big issue for me (the Watcher) was opportunities — I couldn’t quickly find the rule on it (it’s stuck in a sidebar in OM21) — and was letting them buy dice I rolled a 1 on for an action, instead of letting them take a d10 stunt or d8 push die. One of the players found the amount of things that could be accomplished by plot points confusing, and suggested a dumbed-down set of mechanics. I don’t think, reflecting on it, that’s particularly necessary. If the players want to ignore the things they can do, good enough, but they can have the options.
I found the the die mechanic — using d4 through d12 — far superior to the classic FATE mechanics, to which Cortex Plus and MHR owe a lot. (I recently playtested a FATE-based game and found the +/- dice and number of modifiers truly annoying.) Equally, we found the stress/asset/complication mechanic borrowed from FATE to be occasionally overly complex, although it works well for creating quick modifiers without having to do the math. Just use the die if applicable. The other issue…if you’re not a dice pool rules fan, MHR is dice pool heavy. You can have as low as two dice, but up to a dozen dice, easily. This can get hard to manage for a player or Watcher.
That said, I find I still really like MHR for supers and other settings where you have sharply different power ranges (like, say, a Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase type setting.)
Looks like I’m on at least two new books in Cubicle 7’s Victoriana line. Under NDA right now, so that’s about all I can say is “Back in the RPG writing game.”
Here’s a few characters from our up and coming Liberty City campaign using the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying by Margaret Weis Productions that just got jerked out of print by Disney.
PARADOX (Dr. James Fravik)
Affiliations: Solo d8, Buddy d10, Team d6
Distinctions: It’s All Just Math, Just Lucky I Guess, What the @#$% Did I Do?
POWER SETS:
Probability Manipulator: Probability control d8, Intuition d8, Teleport d8; SFX, Can I Help?: Can loan his Probability Control Die to another player and shutdown the power until the other player has used the die. Can recover the die early with a plot point; SFX, Need a Lift?: +d6 and step up affect die one to inflict a complication on a target; SFX, Second Chance: Can reroll a Probability Manipulation test spending a plot point; SFX, Superpostion: 1 plot point to ignore physical stress; Limitation, Exhausted: Gain a plot point when power set is shutdown. Recover with an opportunity or in transition scene; Limitation, Fate Fights Back: On a 1 or 2, create an opportunity for the Watcher.
SPECIALTIES: Business Expert, Covert Expert, Science Master
MILESTONES:
I’ll Take My Chances: Gain 1XP when first using Probability Manipulation, 3XP when Watcher uses PM opportunity against the team, 10XP when power set leads to catastrophe or overwhelming success.
One Many, Many Worlds: Gain 1XP when he questions the reality of his situation, 3XP when he fails a power set test that causes stress to him or his team, 10XP when he has a cognitive break that requires him to leave the team or abandon the mission.
PARALLEL (Manny Byquist)
Affiliations: Solo d6, Buddy d8, Team d10
Distinctions: Many Copies, Many Problems; The Ultimate Backup, What Haven’t I Done?
POWER SET:
The Human Copier: One Man Mob (3xd8); SFX, Absorb Dupes: 1plot point to eliminate any dupe complication. If they resist step up emotional stress; step up any stress that the dupe has taken; SFX, Did I Do That?: In a transition scene can create a dupe-related resource; SFX, Plenty to Go Around: Acts like area effect; SFX, Take One For the Team: 1 plot point ignores physical stress on him or any team member; Limitation Fly in the Ointment: Gains 1 plot point when a dupe-related complications is played, step up his emotional stress +1; Limitation, Mob Cohesion: his One Man Mob power can be targeted with area effect, and a d10 physical stress takes a die from One Man Mob power. Can be recovered with an opportunity or during transition scene.
It’s Kinda My Fault: Gain 1XP when one of his dupes causes trouble for the character; 3XP when dupe is involved in a major criminal event as hero or villain; 10XP when he or his dupes defeats the team in a scenario.
Back Up…and Side and Front, As Well!: Gain 1XP when he or a dupe “Takes One For the Team”; 3XP when a scene is won primarily due to his dupes; 10XP when a team member dies protecting or being protected by a dupe.
Reading a post from my Victoriana alum (and contributor over at Gnome Stew) Walt Ciechanowski on Facebook got me thinking about verisimilitude in modern games or writing today. Specifically, he was talking about Boost!, a citrus soda that is available only in a select area of southern New Jersey. I have a similar strange food from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, where I lived as a kid — Schaeffer’s Bologna, an “all-beef bologna, flavored only with salt and pepper”, an a touch of garlic has an edible skin and is great snack food.
For the longest time, you couldn’t get real New Mexican chile paste (red or green) or salsa outside of the state. The California stuff is too bland, Texas too sweet…during the ’90s, when I was away from Albuquerque, I would get cravings for NM-style chile and could only find something similar in Sierra Vista, Arizona when I was stations at Sierra Vista. It was also one of the first places I could find McEwan’s ales outside of Scotland — then it started popping up everywhere until Heineken bought the brewery and delisted it, leading to my singular desire to blow the Netherlands off the face of Europe.
So those of you reading, please chime in — what a particular, very popular but highly localized food or drink from your neighborhood or past. (Tell us what it is and where it’s limited to. Who knows, it might turn up in someone’s game!)
The Black Campbell 