George F Quail

12:44 pm: Battle For The Tiara #1
Last night's superhero session seemed to go fine. The comabt was supposed to be a sideshow and ended up taking most of the evening - a challenging fight against Amazo, supervillain robot who can copy the powers of other superheroes. but we still managed to debut a Wonder Woman (or two) and introduce Ahmad's character.

Ahmad hasn't RPed before but he seemed to really get into the swing of things. His character, Historacle (with the ability to touch people and learn their history) has a more comedy bent and fits in well alongside The Flusher or Kid Flash. Poor ol' Matthew had what must be the worst dice-rolling luck ever, failing to at all in about six turns of play.

Next time the rest of our multitude of Wonder Women will debut, and the players will no doubt snoop further into their various origins.

Tags: mutants & masterminds

04:48 pm: Hellcats - Term 2
Last night was an alright game of Hellcats & Hockeysticks. There were a lot of (seven, in total) and a slightly weaker plot hook than last time - but we still managed to have fun.

As well as Ailsa and Rae, Emma came along and joined in the naughty schoolgirl dress-up. She hadn't played an RPG before and I wasn't sure if Ailsa and I had done enough to explain the deal - but she seemed to get into the swing of things. Alas, I was also dressed up as the headmistress, something which most of you won't want to see. (And those who did probably want to un-see.)

Emma and Rae seem to be up for playing with us again - and in particular, Rae was asking about Courtesans, the game of 18th century high-class hookers. Since my male players are basically never going to agree to this game, this is my best chance to play it. Alas, I suspect this will involve me dressing up as a Madam as well... Anything to get them in corsets, lads!

Next week is the start of superheroes - a return to Justice League Beyond. As well as Ailsa, Raj, Matthew and Weeble we should be joined by Dave and also by Ahmad, a comic-book-loving chum of mine who has never tried RPGs but is keen to give it a go. (Aaron might also be able to join us but his work schedule right now doesn't make it possible for him to properly commit.)

What can they expect in the next superhero game? Here's a vague hint... But I'm open to suggestions!

Tags: hellcats & hockeysticks, mutants & masterminds

11:29 am: Two Car Wrecks For The Price Of One
Last night was Ghostbusters Internationa - the tenth Ghostbusters Glasgow adventure. Jo came back for the night and our plot involveed the ghost of the previous trashed ECTO-1 chasing the current one about. Also: dominoes were bought, Partick Thistle scores were compared and the contents of World 5-3 of Super Mario Bros 3 were discussed.

I'm keen to get a GBI London game in soon, it's been too long since we played. And hopefully, around Halloween, we can get a combination session in - I've been promising a crossover for years...

Tags: ghostbusters international

03:44 pm: Crash Course - Paranoia & Metaplot
I have written several times before about my dislike of metaplot. When I do so I usually mention specific gamlines - AD&D 2nd Edition gameworld and old World of Darkness being the classic poster childs for metaplot settings, and popular enough that they serve as good touchstones. However, another one I bring up is Paranoia 2nd Edition and "the MegaWhoops".

Paranoia, as many of you will know, is a 1984-esque comedy roleplaying game set in a dystopian future. In a standard Paranoia adventure, players get hosed left and right leading to a conclusion where players are either dead, arrested or in a substantially worse state than they started. In one particular Paranoia 2nd Ed adventure, however, the adventure ends with the players totally intact.... but The Computer, the maniacal electronic ruler of the complex, is shut down and fails to reboot. The ending is essentially that society has collapsed.

Now, most games int he 90s went through a phase of metaplot and Paranoia was no exception. Earlier adventures had some vague connections to each other - equipment from one would be referenced in another, the events of one adventure set up the second. But this is the big moment in Paranoia where it commited what I feel is one of the big sins of metaplot - it moved into changing the game world in a huge way and basically forced players who wanted to keep buying material to follow that change. Subsequent adventures were all post-MegaWhoops until, near the end of the edition, a Paranoia Sourcebook was released that partially restored the status quo.

This is not to say the computer crashing is a terrible idea! The Crash Course Manual is a book with some charms. That sort of event book for any RPG would be a useful thing - a guide on what would happen to Paranoia if a major event occured. It provides multiple possible causes for the crash (not just the "official" one), varies from talking about "day after" to "years later" stuff, and provides a host of plot hooks for that world - this is all excellent stuff.

However, it also constantly references previous adventures - nearly every adventure hook is predicated on a previous published adventure - and the real rot is less that it existed and more that it took the game forcibly down this alternate route. Interested in the game you bought the core rules for? Sucks to be you. It also came along at the end of the 2nd Edition and the dawn of the next, which was considered a notable drop in comedy and quality.

Once again, I think it's telling that Paranoia moved to a more toolkit supplement approach and doesn't do metaplot anymore.

Tags: rpg theory

01:57 pm: Team America-Style
Ooh, I've not been well the past few days! Since Blackpool my sleep and eating pattern has been shot - not helped by the book club on Monday and the doctors on Tuesday after work - and I think it combined with "no shower" and "Scott brought a bug into the office" into a bit of a perfect storm.

I was up in the middle of the night on Tuesday, throwing up impressively - as a man who doesn't drink this isn't something I've done in years and I honest to God thought I was on the edge of death. Ailsa very dutifully helped me clean up afterwards, and then on Wednesday I tried to go to work - but I was barely functioning and I went home by 1000. I then lay on the couch, fell asleep and drifted in and out until 1630. I went to the supermarket but I passed ou again at 1830 - 1930, had a wee dinner and then fell asleep by 2200.

I feel much better today. still a little off-colour, but nowhere near as bad as I was. Unfortuantely I needed to cancel WFRP and I'm not sure we'll get a chance to run it this block, but that's not the end of the world.

04:47 pm: Blackpool Rundown
Had a nice time in Blackpool this weekend, despite some transport woes. On the Friday we were late for the train into town, so we had to get a taxi. Then the train from Glasgow to Preston was late arriving so we missed our connection to Blackpool South.... and the next one wasn't for 90 minutes. :-( Thankfully we got the train to Blackpool North and it was only a few quid for a taxi to the B&B, but it was a bit stressful.

It didn't help that the day before we went away we'd had to get an emergency plumber round - the lady below us complained of a leak and it turned out our shower had a bust pipe behind the wall. Rather than have time to slowly get ready we had to stand about with the landlady and an emergency plumber until 2330, which meant we were in a bit of a rush on Friday - and our hot water was out of action so we wouldn't have a shower until we arrived in Blackpool.

We pre-booked a Resort Pass which covered entry to all the biggies, so on Sunday we did the Blackpool Tower, the Blackpool Tower Dungeon and Madame Tussauds. (These were all quite brave for Ailsa who neither likes heights, scares or statues of people.) On Sunday we did Sea Life and visited the Pleasure Beach - the resort pass included a wristband for free use of basically all the rides. For £50, this is apretty sweet deal, as each individual part tended to clock up as £15+ a pop.

We also went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, took in a chinese circus at the Northern Pier and popped about the shops - including a three storey adult store with it's own coffee shop. (Let it never be said Blackpool isn't classy.) There was the inevitable arcade visit which included my beloved Out Run 2 and a game I hadn't seen before, Pac Man Battle Royale - just a year old, it's a multiplayer Pac-Man game where you have to avoid ghosts but also eat your opposing Pac-Men to win. Enormously good fun!

The B&B we stayed at, The Langroyd Hotel was lovely and I'd reccomend it to anyone. it was a reasonable price and the couple running it were just lovely. They served up huge breakfasts wtih cereal, toast & a wad of cooked food that left us so full we basically needed no lunch. They were also astoundingly friendly and helpful - they let us store our luggage at theirs even though checkout was 1000 and our train wasn't until 1800, for example. When we go again (to catch Hot Ice, a show which is only on for the summer season) I'd strongly consider using them.

Tags: blackpool

09:35 am: Anniversary
Yesterday was Ailsa and I's eighth anniversary. (Or at least, it's the date we picked - we struggle slightlty to work out exactly what date in mid-April Ailsa finally asked me out, so we had to sorta pick our best guess.) The evening was just spent in the house with chimichurri sauce steak, apple pie and a certain amount of disgusting mushines.

Tomorrow we get the train after work and we're going to Blackpool for the weekend. It might nto sound very romantic, but it's what Ailsa wanted, and in any case there's more donkey rides than in Paris so who is really the better tourist destination, eh?

04:45 pm: The Story Told Before
As mentioned at Pendragon, I was very surprised that Ailsa took Sir Rhodri from starting knight to marrying Lady Jenna.... because I'd read a very similar story before.

This post on the official Pendragon forum, from a year ago, features a user regaling others with story of how his religious knight could not relate to women except the child Lady Jenna, and formed an odd relationship with her that saw them marrying.

This story had stuck in my head so, when Ailsa played a religious knight no use with women, I had Lady Jenna talk to him in the second session as part of my "Introduce all the eligible ladies" section. I hadn't seriously expected anything to happen of it - after all, it's a freak set of circumstances in that original poster and won't be duplicated... right?

When I did later on have Lady Jenna jump Sir Rhodri, my plan wasn't to marry them but to specifically not marry them - to show that marriage in this era was about politics, not about love. Sir Rhodri would haev to do something exceptional to victor in these circumstances and would most likely fail.

....Obviously, it didn't quite happen that way. :-)

Tags: pendragon

09:28 am: Pendragon: Aftermath
Final session of the Uther Phase of Pendragon went well. For those of you who care, it was a pretty exciting session: taking in a very large battle in which the players were just victorious, and then a rather unexpected aftermath that seriously shakes up the status quo for the next time around. Ailsa finally got Sir Rhodri paired off with Lady Jenna, though the marriage ceremony was slightly, um, overshadowed by the other events of the campaign.

Alas, it was not a battle without casualties. One round in particular I scored multiple criticals: first to establish which side had superior tactical choices, then I got to pick one of the more obscure and dangerous random foes, then on the actual attacks itself. The end result was that Raj's secondary character, Sir Malcolm, gave his life; and Ailsa's secondary character, Sir Leander, was this close to death if it had not been for a very lucky critical on Aaron's first aid roll to patch him up. On the bright side, Sir Malcolm's death occured in the same round he himself critically hit his opponent - and the end result, using his last breath to slay a Saxon giant, was so awesome it qualified for the Glorious Death glory bonus. :-)

The end chat about Pendragon was mostly positive - Dave, Aaron, Ailsa and Raj were definitely keen to play again and Raj in particular had found a few of his concerns from before we played hadn't come to pass. Matthew, however, wasn't so positive - he had spoken before about not quite clicking with this game. A big part of it seems to be the rules - the mechanics seemed a bit "old-fashioned" to him and at some points very fiddly, and I can understand that. Unfortuantely I'm not sure there's much that can be done about this, since by his own admission it would probably be too much work to change it.

Tags: pendragon

11:18 am: Pendragon: The Battle Of St Albans
Tonight will be the year 495 in Pendragon and with it the end of the first block of the campaign. Thirteen sessions in, it's been an awfully fun game and one I'll be sorry to see end: hopefully we'll be able to return to it soon.

I was a little bit nervous going into Pendragon, because it was a game I'd been wanting to play for years but which I had sometimes struggled to get players enthused for. I was worried that I'd find the end result a bit disappointing, but it's worked out pretty well. There's definitely been a learning curve with the rules but it's worked out pretty well overall.

Some interesting personal plots have emerged. Raj and Matthew's characters, Sir Elad and Sir Geriant, had their marriage attemptsas an early major player, inspiring them onwards to heroism. Aaron's imaginatively titled Sir Aeron has a sort-of rivalry with Sir Lycus that has popped up here and there. In the last few weeks, Ailsa's Sir Rhodri has come to the fore as he tries to get the hand of the Earl's daughter in marriage - no small feat, but one he will achieve next year barring disasters. (But only because he's got an astounding amount of glory and has completed a personal quest for the Earl - one which required the assistance of many other parties.)

From an NPC point of view, we're early enough in Pendragon that few huge names have appeared - Arthur is a baby, Lanceleot isn't born yet and various other characters have had more cameos than true appearances. Still, I love getting to ham it up big style as Merlin, and King Pellinore (in full-on The Sword In The Stone form) was a surprise hit, hanging about with the players for the whole session he appeared in.) If we play again I'll be returning to Ganieda, Merlin's sister from the Welsh Arthurian mythology - Sir Rhodri only completed his quest with her aid, and to get that he had to promise her a favour.

After Pendragon finishes there'll be a couple of one-offs (including the inevitable Ghostbusters session) then we'll probably run Justice League Beyond for a bit. After that, though, I'd really like to return to Pendragon again for the Anarchy Phase. We'll see how people feel closer to the time.

Tags: pendragon