Gateway 2010: Saturday Night
Only only played one RPG on Saturday and because the DBA post was so huge and because the game was so good, it merits its own post.
The game was Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World as run by Colin. I hadn't seen or heard much about the game before the con, except for the generic indie buzz that it was attracting as the New Hotness. As for Colin, he is without a doubt one of the best GMs I know. He declared this game "the best fucking game I have ever run at a con". This is a good point to note that if you don't like "fucking", in word or deed, this isn't the game for you.
This Apocalypse World scenario starts with class-based chargen (mostly multi-choice option selection) and a "love letter" to your character from the GM. Players quickly create their characters, then assign their relationships to other characters, then determine how things are going in each character's section of the ruined post-apocalyptic city that they all run. I was Core, The Angel (my class, a healer), and I had a list of four positive outcomes; If I rolled 10+ on 2d6 + Sharp (my best skill at +2), I could choose three to be true, the other with be false. If I rolled 7-9, I could choose two to be true; not so good. If I rolled 6 or less, they would all be false. Snake eyes.
So with my friend killed by a faction that wanted to control the city, no quarantine established on the plague-infected people who collected food from the river, no decontamination procedures established, and my kid brother stealing and reselling my medical supplies, Core had a lot to do in the session. I decided that Core was really most concerned about his brother but felt a duty to the rest of the city, so determined to see to the safety of the population and impatient to talk to his brother, Core resolved the first three problems by shooting a succession of people in the face with a shotgun, to Colin's initial surprise. Meanwhile, all hell was breaking loose as the rest of the city engaged in all out war with Ambergrease, the warlord on the other side of the river, and a mysterious psychic, Blind-Blue, began co-opting the other players to his service.
When the smoke cleared, the other players had destroyed Ambergrease and I had cleaned house inside the city, leaving the Hardholder (the ruler of the city) in complete control. Unfortunately, the process had opened a number of cracks in our ranks, and after several physical and verbal confrontations, a number of the characters were set on leaving the city. So when I failed to convince my brother to stop his stealing and succeeded only in crushing his dreams of a better life elsewhere, he left the city with them.
There is a lot of buzz about the game, and in particular the GMing style it encourages. I can't speak to that, except to say that it looked very interesting from the other side of the screen and that it worked for Colin!
I'll be buying this.
[Addendum: As well as Mash's link in the comments, see also the reports from Confusion by Mr Mouse and Total Party Kill, and Gamester at Large's posts on running AW in Wellington.]
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The game was Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World as run by Colin. I hadn't seen or heard much about the game before the con, except for the generic indie buzz that it was attracting as the New Hotness. As for Colin, he is without a doubt one of the best GMs I know. He declared this game "the best fucking game I have ever run at a con". This is a good point to note that if you don't like "fucking", in word or deed, this isn't the game for you.
This Apocalypse World scenario starts with class-based chargen (mostly multi-choice option selection) and a "love letter" to your character from the GM. Players quickly create their characters, then assign their relationships to other characters, then determine how things are going in each character's section of the ruined post-apocalyptic city that they all run. I was Core, The Angel (my class, a healer), and I had a list of four positive outcomes; If I rolled 10+ on 2d6 + Sharp (my best skill at +2), I could choose three to be true, the other with be false. If I rolled 7-9, I could choose two to be true; not so good. If I rolled 6 or less, they would all be false. Snake eyes.
So with my friend killed by a faction that wanted to control the city, no quarantine established on the plague-infected people who collected food from the river, no decontamination procedures established, and my kid brother stealing and reselling my medical supplies, Core had a lot to do in the session. I decided that Core was really most concerned about his brother but felt a duty to the rest of the city, so determined to see to the safety of the population and impatient to talk to his brother, Core resolved the first three problems by shooting a succession of people in the face with a shotgun, to Colin's initial surprise. Meanwhile, all hell was breaking loose as the rest of the city engaged in all out war with Ambergrease, the warlord on the other side of the river, and a mysterious psychic, Blind-Blue, began co-opting the other players to his service.
When the smoke cleared, the other players had destroyed Ambergrease and I had cleaned house inside the city, leaving the Hardholder (the ruler of the city) in complete control. Unfortunately, the process had opened a number of cracks in our ranks, and after several physical and verbal confrontations, a number of the characters were set on leaving the city. So when I failed to convince my brother to stop his stealing and succeeded only in crushing his dreams of a better life elsewhere, he left the city with them.
There is a lot of buzz about the game, and in particular the GMing style it encourages. I can't speak to that, except to say that it looked very interesting from the other side of the screen and that it worked for Colin!
I'll be buying this.
[Addendum: As well as Mash's link in the comments, see also the reports from Confusion by Mr Mouse and Total Party Kill, and Gamester at Large's posts on running AW in Wellington.]
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