The Black Campbell

Okay…I broke down and bought an e-copy of Smallville RPG from Margaret Weiss’ bunch.  I’m a huge fan of the Cortex system, and after hearing about the changes for the setting, I figured I’d go ahead and have a shufty at this rules set.  (I’ve not watched the show, but I do like a good superhero game.)

I’ll do a real review in a day or two, but my initial thoughts:  it’s a soap-opera RPG with stuff for supers tossed in.  Some of the mods could be used to good effect in Cortex (there’s a Cortex Plus in the offing that I suspect does just that.)

I’m a bit iffy on it, but might be interested in running a test game just to see how it plays.  More to follow…

Wave cannon for the win!

A lot of the Hollow Earth Expedition traits are designed to give characters certain shticks to play, but one area where they seem to be lacking is in traits for gun-bunnies.  A lot of the pulp characters of the 1930s were double gun wielding, shoot-a-bunch-of-guys types (The Shadow, The Phantom, etc…)  So here’s a few new gunner traits (and a revamped one) to give those twin nickel-plated 1911 users a bit more freedom:

RAPID SHOT (modified):  Prerequisite: Dexterity 3.  Your character can attack the same target tiwce, as per p. 69 of the core book, or they can attack two different characters at -2 die to each attack.  (So you can shoot mook #1 with your pistol at -2 dice, then mook #2 with the same penalty.  Requires the weapon to have a Rate of M or A.)  Can be bought twice — x2 the first attack is without penalty, the second at -2; x3 both attacks are with no penalty.

This will allow you to recreate the cowboy fanning the hammer on his Colt Peacemaker or blazing like sixty on his 1911…

COVERING FIRE!  Prerequisite:  Firearms 3, Weapon with a rate of M or A.  Your character has a knack for banging bullets off in a way that makes the enemy want to keep their heads down.  When laying donw cover fire, they gain a +2 die to their FRIEARMS test v. the enemy.   May be taken twice.

Covering Fire maneuver:  A character may attempt to aid a companion by keeping the head of the enemy down.  The character can roll a FIREARMS test (or if they don’t have the skill a DEX+CHA-2 die) v. the WILL of the enemy.  Each success over the WILL tests adds to the DEFENSE of the characters they are covering.

Suppressive Fire maneuver:  This is a bit different from covering fire — suppressive fire is designed to keep the enemy pinned down and unable/ unwilling to engage.  It requires a weapon with a Rate of M or A, or enough people working in concert (3+) to lay down enough fire.  With suppressive fire, the character may choose to use their Charisma instead of Dexterity (whichever is higher) and their Firearms skill v. the WILL+cover bonus of the enemy.  Every success over the WILL of the enemy keeps them from attacking for that number of combat rounds.  The characters may not actively defend while laying down suppressive fire.

This is week 2 of gamemastering with the iPad (despite my having belatedly posted on week one yesterday…)  All of the same programs are in use: PDF Reader and Diceshaker the two primary.  All three game books are on the iPad for the reader, as were the adventure notes and NPC character sheets.

The adventure pitted the group against Blood Bay pirates whom they had to escape, using the dilapidated Latham 47.02 seaplane of Roald Amundsen (search posts for a more historically accurate version of the explorer than that in the Hollow Earth corebook.)  Mass volleys of flintlock fire had me roll the attack from pirates against the heroes as their plane was taxiing from the Blood Bay wharf, so i did a bunch of swapping from notes to the Secrets of the Surface World sourcebook (nicely formatted with a table of contents to get to the right areas of the book quickly) for stats on cannons from the pirate frigates, as well as stats for their plane (as I had forgotten to swap over the writeup on the Latham and my friend’s internet was down so I couldn’t pull it off this blog site), then back to the die roller.

I don’t think it took any more time than it would have to have shuffled through pages of the physical book, look at notes on the computer screen and roll actual dice (or on the laptop, for that matter.)

The incredible battery life of the iPad is a plus, as well:  last week the device was at a 48% charge and I kept tapping the screen from time to time to keep the notes up — a three hour session left me with about 20%.  This week, I let the thing power off from time to time, firing it up only when needed (this takes a second or two max) and used about 10% of the charge for a three hour session.

Overall, GMing a Hollow Earth Expedition game on the iPad turned out to be extremely easy, and for the most part, it didn’t slow down play.  Next week, we’ll be giving it a good kicking with my Battlestar Galactica campaign, where I normally have close to a dozen NPCs written up in one file, the fleet ships in another, game notes, etc. and I have to roll much more often for Cortex-based games than for HEX’s Ubitquity.

Kawada and AIST have unveiled their newest bipedal robot, the HRP-4.    It features improved bipedal motion, balance, and the cameras and microphones have been improved, along with object recognition software (they show the latter off about five minutes in.)  It should be on sale to research facilities next year for $300,000.

Starting last week I’m running a Hollow Earth Expedition game using the iPad instead of my laptop.  I did this because I’m mostly expecting to be traveling to and from the session via motorcycle, and minimizing the amount of crap you lug with you is advisable on a bike.  For the first night, I did bring all the books and GM screen with me, although I have the books in electronic format on the iPad.  Tonight, I think I’m just taking the GM screen and iPad.

For the experiment I am running Kdan Mobile’s PDF  Reader for the game books, adventure notes and major NPC character sheets (typed up in WordPerfect X3 on my laptop, then pdf’d.)  For the dice roller I’m using Diceshaker (for the iPhone, as well — it allows you to shake the device to roll.)  Diceshaker allows you to set up multiple dice for rolling — like, say 20d2 for HEX, or any configuration of dice rolled together, just pick the die set and hit reroll.  Or shake the device.  For simplicity, I put the app icons next to each other for quick swapping between notes and dice.

The first night went smoothly — swapping between NPC sheets and notes was simple enough and fairly quick.  I didn’t have to look into any of the books, so I can’t speak to how easy that would be.  The HEX PDFs are well set up with a table of contents to jump to areas of the books (unlike the Dr. Who PDFs — argh!), so I suspect it won’t be a problem.  If I know the critters they’ll run into, I could put up bookmarks, as well, to get me to the pertinent info…

Swapping to the dice is a bit more time consuming than having a die program up next to the WP window, but ordinarily I “take the average” for Hollow Earth critters and mooks, only major villains get rolls.  Also, I occasionally like to have players roll for the baddies — it’s fun as they get to bust on each other for good rolls on the villains.  The lag between the notes to dice, though, is a second or two.  Negligible.

The game venue has a wifi connection, so I can look up things I need quickly on the internet if I need.  Pictures of gear — like the Latham 47.02 seaplane were quick to find and easy to show the folks on the iPad screen thanks to the pinch/zoom of the multi-touch screen.

Overall, I found the experience a lot easier than I expected it to be, and carrying two pounds (the iPad, screen, and sundries), vs. the 15 or so pounds for books, screen, laptop, and the box of spent cartirdges I use as style point markers makes is a very tempting way to manage the games.  The real test will be next week, when I try to run a BSG campaign, where I’ve normally got multiple files for fleet ships, major NPCs, and the mission plan up in different tabs in WordPerfect on the laptop.

From effects artist Simon Terrey…