Space 1889:Red Sands Session 1, And Deadlands:Reloaded.

So on Sunday I finally convened the delayed start of Space 1889:Red Sands.

I am glad to report The Curse is alive and well. This game has collapsed twice due to players having conflicting schedules that eventually killed it. These people assure me that the problem isn't my GM style (my first suspicion), just events.

This day there were supposed to be two players, Matt and Chris, but at the last minute Chris had to beg off as he had contracted a bad cold.

Rather than not play - I had had a rotten month and badly needed the break from suckage - I decided to play with only one player and a GM, padding the numbers out with an army column of 25 troopers, a sergeant and an officer. Matt would be a civilian being escorted through the Libyan desert by the army.

Savage Worlds lends itself very well to this sort of kludge because it splits characters into two types:

• Wild Cards like the players and "boss" baddies who have a number of wounds they can suffer before being taken out (the consequences of that can vary according to the setting), several "bennies" that can be spent to re-roll failed trait checks or "soak" wounds (shrugging off attacks cinematically) and access to certain edges (feats/advantages) restricted to Wild Cards, and

• Extras who are downed by a single wound. Think of the enemy soldiers in a Rambo movie or bandits in a western - extras are characters for players to shoot if opposing or to give support if allied. Extras can be made very quickly. In fact, I used templates from the back of the Space 1889:Red Sands setting book.

 The number of allied NPCs meant I could terrify Matt with a huge number of attacking Bedouins as he raced for Fort Oublié.

I gave him a good run for his money and threw in a Lame GM Bone (LGMB) so that he survived with some soldiers to enter the fort and suffered attacks by what waited within.

And he had a ball. I had a ball. Things can only get better when Chris joins next session.

The preparation involved reading the scenario and setting rules to re-familiarize myself with them, and turning text-block clues into first person diary entries for touchy-feely clues a-la Call of Cthulhu.

I think this time we might get all the way through. I might even finish the Globe of Mars I was working on when the last game collapsed in a puff of weddings and postings abroad.

That was in the afternoon. In the evening I stepped into my friend Craig's game slot and ran Deadlands:Reloaded, the Weird West setting for Savage Worlds. I ran Deadlands a few years ago and had a great time doing so, using a module called Coffin Rock. When it was over I calculated we got 18 3 1/2 to 4 hour sessions from that module, and I could have run another 9 without breaking a sweat. Coffin Rock is just about the best value for RPG dollars I've ever bought.

This evening I ran "Shootout at the Circle R Corral", an inexpensive pdf I bought from the Drivethru RPG website. We got about halfway through before we had to beak for the evening. During that time much Mad Science was deployed on both sides of the GM screen (actually, the screen was off to one side because I prefer to run "in the round" with open die-rolls. The screen is just an aide-memoir for the various once-in-a-blue-moon rules I normally can remember but have trouble with after running D20 most of the time). Mine was largely ineffective, theirs was devastating, blowing my mighty steam wagon to shrapnel with one shot and taking down my clockwork mech with riflefire. The mech proved delightfully incapable of directing gattling gun fire onto any of the many targets and eventually blew up due to over-the-top damage the likes of which have not been seen since Kirk activated the self destruct on the NCC-1701A while Klingons were rifling it.

It was all great fun and we shall be meeting again in two weeks to do some more.

UPDATE: Future posts concerning the Space 1889:Red Sands campaign will be posted in a purpose-built blog rather than here.

So, What Am I Playing These Days?

I spent last night playing in someone else's Space 1889 game, using the Savage Worlds rules.

This setting is more fun than a poke in the eye. Set at the end of the Victorian Age, sometimes on Mars where the miracle of Liftwood makes flying ships a reality. Steampunk on toast.

The GM had pregens but I begged to be allowed to play a home-built character, and turned up with a Weird Scientist with a mania for the wondrous powers inherent in Radium. He was toting a Raduim-Enhanced pistol (SMITE power), a Radium Enhanced cricket bat (aka club, c/w SMITE power) and a flask that used Radium Infusion to produce a beneficial healing elixir (HEAL power), and much scenery chewing was done in the two hours or so we played out.

Pure delight watching the others who took full advantage of the GM's wonderful photo-printed cliff scenery to leap aboard a land ironclad (tank) right before another player blew it up with more dynamite than I thought existed in the world. I merely hid behind rocks shooting at the enemy for most of the time, but my awesome Radium Enhanced attacks were quite ... average if I'm honest. Fun though.

If you get a chance to play this system and setting I urge you to have a go. It is just about the best fun one can have with one's clothes on.

If you are in NYC and happen by the Citicorp Atrium around 7pm next Thursday, drop by the table and join us.

It's a Deja Vu Reboot All Over Again Once More

Okay, time to do some game talk.

It's been a while and I've done quite a bit of gaming in the year and a half I've been gone from here.

I started running Masks of Nyarlathotep a newly reprinted campaign for Call of Cthulhu that my wife bought for me for Christmas, but the campaign has stuttered a bit this time through, with players dropping out before I can kill their characters or drive them mad. Oh well. The advantage of running the game in a Game Store is that there is always an audience, and that audience has recently been knocking on my door asking if they can join in. Naturally I say "Hell yes!" I'll be starting a thread for this game and the observations that arise from it from now on.

The monthly Delta Green campaign sessions are as popular as ever, over-subscribed now with eight players sometimes at a sitting. I enjoy running for this group very much. Their buy-in is atypically fervent and they are a total joy to GM. This game will soon be kicking into higher gear and I will be threading this game in it's own subject too. I have a lot of thinking to do when it comes to D20 Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.

The recent (read: end of last year) launch of the Savage Worlds Space 1889 setting and my love affair with all things Savage Worlds has resulted in my convening not one but two separate parallel campaigns, each being an iteration of the Red Sands campaign from the eponymous setting book. I'll be threading these games both together and individually for pontification purposes.

I've also begun playing Solomon Kane, another Savage Worlds-derived game setting (though in this case one that is self-contained and that requires no additional purchase of a Savage Worlds rulebook). It looks to be a very interesting way of presenting a nuts-and-bolts action-adventure/horror game and I love the rulebook.

My attendance at this year's RetCon was a success, with all four of my games subscribed to the right level. I ran a Realms of Cthulhu scenario set mostly in the Peruvian Rainforest, A Deadlands:Reloaded game set in Great North Woods, A Space 1889 scenario set in the Martian desert at the juncture of the English and German fields of influence and a Call of Cthulhu session late on Saturday night which was a shortened version of A Cracked and Crooked Manse. It was a great success and greatly simplified by the decision to this year go with an all-Savage Worlds program (with the exception of the Call of Cthulhu session).

There were some failures to aviate.

Notably, my friend of many years decided that he no longer wished to play Call of Cthulhu since he did forensic paperwork for a living and was not keen on doing it in an RPG for relaxation, and an attempt to start the D20 Conan campaign Trial of Blood fell flat. That was sad because I was hoping the milieu would appeal to my friend so we could game together again, but it was a total non-starter.

Then there was the Paranoia game I tooled up to run only to find that no-one who had said they wanted to play was actually prepared to turn up. Fiasco! drew no players at all in three weeks of advertizing the session.

And a Dresden Files RPG campaign I was hosting every other Friday, and for which I was taking vacation time to be able to do so, eventually resulted in an evening where I and one other were the only people to show up after a dozen sessions.

Lessons learned:

Dresden Files has taught me to be absolutely without compunction when it comes to giving away a players seat if they haven't RSVP'd for the game (all the store's available slots are booked using Meetups). My campaigns sometimes feature a floating cast list these days but I don't get messed around by losers.

Paranoia taught me that people talk a lot on the web but often don't follow through, even if you know them personally. Don't spend money on rulebooks unless you have at least three "I'll be there's".

Conan taught me that sometimes it is just that the right mix of people isn't there and motivated to play. Two of those who did show interest found they didn't like my style and rather than say so simply faded from sight.

But all this has also shown me that the facts of life are that there are four to eight times as many people who want to play a given game than are willing to sit the other side of the screen and run the bugger. The GM in my neck of the woods who is willing to bide their time will end up beating them off with a stick when word gets around (and if he is any good).

My problem now is time. I don't have enough, otherwise I'd be playing in at least two more games (One Ring and Eclipse Phase) and running even more, like Deadlands:Reloaded, and Slipstream, and Sundered Skies, and The Laundry, and Amber, and Traveller, and Dresden Files - which I dislike the complexity of but feel there's a great game in there struggling to get out - and that doesn't even mention the board games