The New Old Campaign - Part 5 (July Sessions)

Arriving at the caves our neophyte heroes (The thief is 2nd level, all others are 1st) examine the situation, looking at the terrain and the different caves visible from the entrance to the canyon. They decide to head for one of the lower cave mouths nearby. 

As they approach,  they see what looks like a large sleeping bear inside.  Apollo the Elf shoots it with his bow bu it does not awaken. As the group enters the cave to get a closer look, a mighty bellow startles them as an ogre steps into view from the other side of the cave and attacks! Blows are exchanged with the ogre whiffing a lot and the party inflicting some harm until the brute lands a mighty blow on Thaddeus, crushing him to the ground and slaying him instantly. Enraged the remaining heroes redouble their efforts and the mighty ogre crashes to the ground. Being trained adventurers the party loots both bodies before burying the fighter in the woods nearby. Stunned at the loss of one of their toughest comrades, they decide to press on anyway and explore another cave.

This cave shows signs of activity but the group moves down a passage without encountering anything until they walk into a room with 6 goblins ready for battle! A fight ensues and Horus and Apollo are both injured badly before all of the goblins are slain. The team loots what they can then hurries out of the cave, binds up their wounds, and heads back to the Keep to recover and recruit a new fighter.

DM Notes: This session went well for the most part though there was a stunned look on one face when the fighter took a 10-point hit from the Ogre and went from fine to dead in one shot. Low level combat is brutal,and against big creatures it's worse, and that's not unique to this edition of D&D - it was a problem all they way through 3rd, though it's mitigated somewhat in 4th.  Ogres hit hard, period. Naturally that had to be the first cave they entered...

They are somewhat skittish and that's probably a good state for low level characters and inexperienced players to be in. They are quite prepared to head all the way back to the keep after a fight in order to keep from dying though lately there has been more talk of camping somewhere nearby. They are keeping track of torches, arrows, daggers, and oil expended like old pros and it does make me smile. They are quite anxious to get to 2nd level as they see that it will make a big difference to their survivability. 

Characterwise it's looking pretty familiar - the elf uses a sword and shield and sometimes a bow so he can easily have one hand free for spellcasting. The dwarf is usually in front and has converted from battle axe to sword and shield to up his AC. The fighter was a Two-Handed Sword user and was typically the other frontline combatant - we use 5' squares on the battlemat so it's 2 PC's per rank in those 10' wide corridors. The cleric stays in the 2nd rank with the Elf and uses shield and warhammer. The thief stays at the back and shoots a bow - he has no interest in backstabbing just yet - while the magic user has turned into a dagger-throwing machine and is very careful to collect them after a battle, if he can. At this time I believe he is carrying 11 of them, plus a magical one that he does not throw.

Things I learned: Those goblins are very connected. They have deals with the ogre to help fight off intruders and with the hobgoblins too. Unfortunately for them the ogre is already dead, but I can see a terrible cascade if a party does this in a different order and has to fight the goblins, some hobgoblins, and an ogre all at once - nasty.  

The New Old Campaign - Part 4 (July Sessions)

After a long break we discover that our party of novice adventurers has moved north and west to Falcon Keep, located on the borders of human-dominated lands near the Kingdom of the Iron Crown. Our heroes are:

Apollo the Elf

Thaddeus the Fighter

Steven the Thief

Horus Bloodaxe the Dwarf

Isidore the Cleric

Skullduggery II the Magic-User

We begin as they approach the keep and are learning a bit of background on the area from the merchant they are traveling with to the Keep. At the front gate they are asked to state their names and their business, after which they are admitted to the interior of the fort.

Inside they arrange for rooms and supplies and inquire about horses. They pick up a few rumors from traders and in the tavern then settle in for the night. The next morning the heroes head out for the local tourist attraction known as the Caves of Chaos.

Taking a shortcut through the woods (instead of taking the road) they begin to encounter webs, become more and more dense as they move deeper into the forest. Pressing on they encounter 3 giant (large) spiders and quickly dispatch them. They then push forward and soon come upon the Caves of Chaos.

DM Notes:

I know this doesn't seem like a lot but this took two hours of getting back in the groove time - looking for characters, picking out mini's, hearing the background of the region, refreshing a bit on the combat rules and just generally getting back into the game, even for me. Also, the Apprentices have become a bit argumentative during their time together this summer and this will show up more in subsequent session reports. However, this was the restart session and it was good.

Quote of the night: (after being told the party was approaching the Keep) "Shouldn't we get to decide where our characters go?" DM Repsonse: "Later, yes, right now, no." They said they were done with the starter dungeon...

Things I learned:

• Horses are not in the Moldvay Basic Book. They're in the Expert book but not Basic.
• Travel times to and from the Keep and the Caves are not what I remember
• No wandering monster list! I was sure there should be some wandering monsters but there are none. If you camp overnight near one of the numbered encounter areas there is a chance you will encounter  some of those creatures but that's it.
  

Motivational Monday!

This is something new I want to do - I love so many of the new-style motivational posters that are out on the Internet that I wanted to share a few of them here so this will be a regular Monday thing.

Up next - the return of the Red Book campaign!

Rifts - 20 years!

(Everyone has been on vacation this week which has killed my posting times. Gaps should be less frequent next week)

I know Rifts came out in 1990 and I'm assuming it was around Gen Con since most major releases are, but I don't remember the exact month. I do know that it was huge at the time and my college group jumped on it as soon as someone got the book. We tried the original system, ran into some problems, then decided to run it in Hero system which was our go-to game at the time - fantasy, sci-fi, supers, mechwarrior - it all worked in Hero, and we loved the Rifts background and concept.

So we fired up Hero and debated whether a Juicer's stat bonuses were just inherent stat bonuses or should be aids to the various abilities like STR etc. Should extra attacks be an aid to SPD? How to handle Mega Damage? Armor piercing? Killing attack ? I said screw it and made some kind of Ninja-guy I could reasonably call a "crazy" though he didn't have any mind implants. I had recently re-read The Blackcollar books by Timothy Zahn and was basically making a blackcollar though no one else knew it. The game was fun and ran for at least a few months before we heroed on over to something else, but Rifts has always managed to pop up again every few years in my games. I still have that rulebook I bought in 1990 and it's still intact despite multiple periods of heavy use over that 20-year lifespan, a tribute to some amazing softback binding technology. 

I last ran a game of Rifts in 2008 (using the fairly recent "Ultimate Edition") as a change of pace from the end of an 18-month D&D campaign and after that I can tell you there are really three approaches to running a Rifts campaign in the modern era:

1) Drop the mechanics and run it in another system. This is what we did with Hero and I've seen rules for doing it with GURPS and with Mutants and Masterminds. It's no coincidence that it gets ported to superhero systems a lot - they are the rules best suited to handling the ridiculously wide power levels a group of PC's can have. 

2) Add house rules to the basic Rifts game to make it palatable for your group. This is what I have done most of the times I have run it and it can work well, though it can also lead to major headaches. I think the trick is don't try to re-invent the whole system, just patch the parts that don't work for you. This can be difficult for some of us.

3) Smile, embrace the crazy, and just run it as-is. Don't try to make sense of it. If someone has a problem with it, point to the rulebook and say that's just the way this universe works. It saves a lot of prep time and a lot of agonizing over things like "balance". Everyone should probably do this at least once just to see how the basic mechanics work before modifying them with house rules.

I'll have a few more Rifts posts in the next week including my house rules and notes from my last campaign. It's a game that has inspired, excited, and frustrated me for 20 years so it deserves a little celebration.

Campaigns of the last 10 years...and beyond!

I was thinking about how I have mainly been a DM for the past 10 years, much more than I have been a player. I decided to make a list of the campaigns I have run from 2001 onward:

• "Greyhawk Shadows" - 3rd edition D&D set in Greyhawk. This was the first 3rd edition campaign for most of us and during this campaign many of my current players first joined our group. This started with Sunless Citadel, ran through Thieves in the Forest, then the Monastery update from Dungeon magazine, and into Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil where it bogged down for over a year, including 2 TPK's. Don't get me wrong, I love that module,  but it can be a huge grinding war of attrition if you let it.  This campaign never got past it, or about 12th level and ran for about 2 years with a break in the middle.
• "The Coin of Power" - Started after the 1st TPK in the TOEE this was set in Kalamar and used the Kalamar Coin Trilogy of modules and was a change from the GH campaign as it involved wandering all over Tellene in search of the coin, the villains, and the parts to make another one. It's a good set of adventures to a degree but it's not as Epic as the Temple. We ended up cutting this one short to go back to the TOEE to try and finish it but it still ran about 3 months.
• "Shadowrun - Escalation" - This was a total change after the 2nd TPK in TOEE. We decided to take a break and run an entirely different game (that still had magic, elves, and dwarves). This went fairly well and it's where my players got a hold of the nuke (see last post) although it did prove that they don't care much for figuring out conspiracies. I had a whole background plot of a war between the Mafia and the Yakuza since all of the players had contacts with one or both groups - they didn't care. This was mostly homebrewed although I did use some parts from First Run, like the stuffer shack fight as an intro and the encounter with the cyberzombie. We used 3rd edition SR rules and it ran for about 6 months. 
• "Star Wars - Desperate Measures" - this was a side project on a different night and I have talked about it in an older post but the idea was to have a mini-campaign: one long adventure (really one hairy mission, kind of like a movie plot) made for characters beyond 1st level that would be run and then we would do something else, coming back to another mission down the road with some of those same characters. It went really well and ran for about 3 months.
• "The Scarred Lands Campaign" - After a final bloody battle inside the TOEE the group gave up on it and wanted to do something else but still play D&D. I had been picking up the Scarred Lands material from Sword and Sorcery for some time and really liked it so I brought up and we went with it. Once again first level characters were created and we ran through the starter adventure with celebratory games and a sudden incursion by serpent men. It went well and we played this campaign for 18 months, probably my favorite of all of them. The world is just great, the gods are limited in number and very iconic, the titans make for a potent enemy (actually the background for the game looks a somewhat like 4th edition does now, but I like SL's better) and there are numerous organizations the PC's can join if they so choose and all of them have prestige classes to go along too. I used a lot of Necromancer games material in this, starting with Crucible of Freya and ending up with Tomb of Abysthor as the centerpiece of the campaign for almost a year, then moving on to The Blackguard's Revenge and Iron Crypt of the Heretics, where the campaign crashed to a bad end amid intra-party backstabbing and betrayal, with 2 evil characters teleporting off to a possible happy ending and the rest of the party turned into shadowy undead within the Iron Crypt. There were some bad feelings after that one so I waited a little bit to start the new one.
• "Rifts: the New Frontier" - we went retro as an antidote for that last campaign and busted out the Rifts books. This was a total homebrew with a frontier town, NPC's, a graveyard, a coalition attack and some minor intrigue. Characters were made, fun was had, extensive systemic changes and house rules were made, some complaining was done, and after about 3 months it was time to go back to something more coherent.
• "The Savage Tides of Kalamar" was my final 3rd edition D&D campaign (for now) and was one I put the most work into organizing and plotting out ahead of time. I wanted a big traveling campaign to begin with, so I used Visio to plot out how to include both the Freeport Trilogy and the Dungeon Magazine Savage Tide Adventure Path. We started with Terror in Freeport, went over to another island for the first Savage Tide adventure, and then hopped back and forth between the two for awhile. I had handouts, I had character portraits, I had custom music - it was great and it ran for about 18 months.  We ran through all of the Freeport trilogy and through almost half of the Savage Tide adventures., including the great sea voyage to the Isle of Dread.  The group was on the Isle of Dread when we broke for the holidays at the end of 2009 and some problems within the group led to a disbanding after that, so it will never be finished in that form, but I'm still proud of what we accomplished in a good, solid 18 month campaign.

Some smaller campaigns included 

• A short run with Deadlands Hell on Earth where one character learned how hard it is to keep a car running after the apocalypse.
• A brief flirtation with Megatraveller where my group just wasn't in the mood to obey laws and behave themselves in civilized society
• A brief run of an Old Republic era Star Wars d20 game using the Star Frontiers Volturnis adventures
• A brief run of Arcana Unearthed using a Greek/Roman theme instead of a medieval theme

Current campaigns are the big 3:

• Neccessary Evil using Savage Worlds which has been going about 3 months now while alternating with
• Return to the Ruins of Adventure, by first D&D 4th edition campaign
• The Dragonport Campaign using Moldvay Basic red book D&D which has been quiet for a couple of months due to kid schedules but will be firing back up again next week. 

Campaigns I hope to run in the future:

• A nice big superhero campaign using Hero 5th ed or M&M 2nd edition - I know there are new editions of both but those are the books I have.
• A Star Trek campaign - this is a pipe dream as most of my players have zero interest but I keep working on them.
• A Star Wars d6 campaign - this is likely to happen this summer with the whole family here for big chunks of time
• A Deadlands campaign - probably using DL Reloaded for Savage Worlds. this may be the game we play after Necessary Evil wraps up
• Arcana Evolved - I love it and have everything for it but we'll see.
• Star Wars Saga campaign - I love it and have almost everything for it and have some good ideas - we'll see.
• 1st edition Temple of Elemental Evil set in Greyhawk - this will probably be the followup to the Dragonport campaign as I inflict the complications of 1st edition AD&D on the apprentices and Lady Blacksteel and whoever else dares to join them. This may start this fall, possibly even earlier - we will see.  I intend to run the TOEE-GDQ series in its original form for a group who has never seen it before, and I think it will be a blast. That will pretty much complete their old-school training as far as I am concerned so we will see what they want to play after that. 

Players and Nuclear Weapons

Inspired by my last post...I have had 3 campaigns in which players touched nuclear weapons

The first was a 2nd edition Gamma World campaign and I was the player who used them. I had a mutated wolf who had an immunity to radiation. There was a particularly pesky keep held by the Knights of Genetic Purity and they messed with us one too many times. We had come across a neutron bomb in or travels and the initial thought was to have the hawkoid PC just fly over it and drop it on them, but we figured out that he wasn't fast enough to get out of the blast radius. Instead he carried the wolf (who carried the bomb) over the keep and dropped HIM. The wolf then set up the bomb and started looking for place to hide. One small mushroom cloud later and the wolf unbars the gate and walks out without a scratch.

The second time was a few years later in my Rifts campaign when the players had located a Mechanoid factory in the ruins of Winnipeg, right by Detroit. They had looted some nuclear missiles from an unfortunate Coalition force and rigged them into an even bigger bomb (hey THEY put nuclear engineering into the game, not me). They had been itching to use it for a while and the Mechanoid installation was a perfect target. The power armor trooper fired up his SAMAS, the Dragon Hatchling spelled up, and the rest hopped onto the flying carpet. This motley squadron fought their way through a Mechanoid air patrol AND a Coalition patrol and then nuked that factory hi-fiving all the way home.

The third one was a Shadowrun game where the PC's were hired to drive and escort a truck across the city. The truck was a flatbed with something on it under a tarp and they were instructed not to disturb it. Now they had a similar mission earlier in their careers and they had disturbed it and "it" turned out to be a drugged kidnapped feathered serpent who was very unhappy when he awoke and smoked the first PC who went under the tarp.. They were much better about not looking at IT this time - until they were attacked by cyberzombies. They had to hide out and when they looked it was an old Soviet ICBM which was leaking something that glowed. During the climactic run for the border they were pursued and had some good firefights until finally the party's Gator Shaman truck driver decided that he had had enough and drove it off a dock into Puget Sound. I thought it would be interesting to see what the party would do with their hands on a nuclear weapon and it was - pity they didn't keep it longer, but they wanted no part of it.

Besides those above several Traveller campaigns have theoretically had nuclear missiles on board their ship but they never used them as they didn't want to get into matters of Imperial Law. Some Supers games have encountered them but they were never actually fired at or by the PC's.

That certain type of player...

I don't have a name for them. they're usually a type of power gamer and on the surface they may appear as such. They are usually mechanically interested in the system and focused on combat effectiveness. One of my friends is my prototype for this player type.

In D&D they usually build fighters of some kind. Toughness is important. In post-Arcana 1st edition they built barbarians. Or half-ogres if that was allowed. Half-Ogre barbarians were probably their favorite. Swinging a two-hander in one hand with an 18/00 STR while having 20+ hp at first level was just the top of the world to them.

In Rifts they usually built Full Conversion Borgs and typically travelled with spare suits of Borg heavy combat armor- again, toughness is important. Railguns were awesome and their ideal character was the Red Borg in that one painting. The Germany Sourcebook was their favorite in those early days because it was full of awesome Borgs and some cool power armor.

In Champions they built bricks - Armor, Forcefield, Power Defense, Knockback Resistance, usually coupled with some kind of HTH Killing attack, often with armor piercing, typically in the form of claws or a sword. It's important to be tough and to look badass. Wolverine was probably their favorite character in Marvel, but Wolverine in Colossus' body was what they wanted to play.Haymakers and move through's were their main combat maneuver. No codes against killing here, friend.

In Gamma World they went for a mutant with Force Field, some kind of ranged attack, and enhanced PS or CN. If they didn't get something like that they dumped it and played a PSH, begging for Power Armor of any flavor, a vibroblade, and a nuclear weapon - hey they wouldn't stat them if they didn't want someone to use them.

In Twilight 2000 they took Recon 80 as a starting character. Always. They were also always Green Berets, Rangers, SEALs, Force Recon, SAS, or Spetanaz. They usually carried C4 in addition to at least 3 guns and an AT weapon of some kind - and they still moved like ninjas.

In Warhammer 40,000 he likes Terminator Marines, preferably Chaos Terminator Marines because they are more badass and all spiky and stuff. Lightning Claws rocked in Rogue Trader.

In Marvel Super Heroes they were Wolverine. Or Colossus. Or Thor. Or Thing if none of those were available and maybe Wonder Man if Thing was taken. At least he had shades.

I don't know what they play in DC Heroes - we never stuck with it long enough to find out. I suspect it would be Superman. Or, more likely, Darkseid.

In Traveller their goal is to talk the DM into staring with Battle Dress and a FGMP-15, but they will negotiate down to a PGMP-13 if that's the best they can get. "But the merchant can start with a _ship_" is a common refrain here. Failing that it becomes their #1 goal to get those things as soon as possible.

In Star Fleet Battles he likes the Klingon C8 Dreadnought because Klingons are badass and the C8 is an awesome ship and one of the toughest DN's in the game.

In Shadowrun they play the character with the .01 starting essence and were very excited when the cyberzombie rules came out in 3rd edition so they could finally break through the zero essence barrier. Humanity is irrelevant -being immune to Panther Cannon fire is awesome and having a reaction time so fast you can act before you even think of it is a great power.

So the defining thing here is to be tough, be able to kill things in cool ways, and to look awesome doing it. Now Paladins can do some of that but Paladins aren't cool to these guys - too many restrictions on behavior. Assassins though...

Anyway these are the surface characteristics of this player type. The real defining trait though

is best illustrated by an example from play:

Years ago I ran a Rifts campaign that lasted 15 months (no really I did). My prototypical friend was one of about 8 characters in the party on their long journey from Texas to the ruins of Detroit and back - this was my second campaign to feature PC nuclear weapon use). He was of course a full conversion Borg, straight out of the Germany Sourcebook, a Gold Borg I believe. They were finally at the outskirts of Detroit and had to pass through a graveyard to avoid being spotted by some bad guys. They encounter a normal looking human in the graveyard and ask him for directions - the guy blows them off. The Borg pops his fist-spikes, gets right up in his face, and threatens him. Said human picks up the Borg and throws him way over there wherupon the Borg, realizing he faces a vampire, hits Turbo Mode and runs right on back to camp at 100MPH. This is despite being maybe the least vulnerable character in the party to a vampire as he's mostly metal. Didn't matter- that thing might have hurt him, so he ran away.

This encounter was when it crystallized for me - the same thing had happened in several games before - he builds the toughest badass he can within the system mechanics of whatever game we're playing then proceeds to sit at the back of the party most of the time. When combat breaks out he jumps in until he takes damage of any kind and then he runs away, possibly yelling for a cleric. I've seen it in D&D, Shadowrun (think that was vampires too, and he was a cybered-out Elf), Traveller (don't want to scratch the battle dress - I think we teased him about it being more of a battle-skirt given his attitude) Gamma World, Twilight, etc. Pretty much any game we played in the 80's and 90's this player had the same character. He did play a necromancer once in 2nd edition and that partially solved the problem - he had minions he could send in to fight and some kind of teleport thing to get him out of danger if his robe got dirty in some way.

Anyway I might call this the "Power Coward" if I was pressed for a name. He's a lot like a Power Gamer but he's not interested in testing it out - he already know his creation is the baddest and he doesn't want you to scratch it or get it dirty.

Gaming FIction Review - Swordmage

This time I'm reviewing one of the newer D&D books - Swordmage, by Richard Baker. It's labelled "Blades of the Moonsea Book 1" but it is a standalone story and I have not read the rest of the series. It came out in 2008 and is apparently up to a trilogy as of right now.

Headline: This is actually a good story and a good D&D book.

I have not read any other novels by Richard Baker but I will look for more. I found the writing to be a little more adult than in the older D&D novels I have read, which is a good thing. It's set in Hulberg, a small city on the Moonsea. I have a soft spot for the Moonsea going back to Pool of Radiance and that's one of the things that drew my attention to this book. It's also the first novel set in the current 4th edition version of the Forgotten Realms after the spellplague and all the other changes including an 80-year timeline jump. So the setting appeals to me in several ways.

The main character is Geran Hulmaster, the titular swordmage, and we meet him in an interesting prologue in Myth Drannor. Circumstances ensue, and the story begins with him returning to Hulberg after a long absence after hearing of the death of a friend. It turns out the Hulmasters are the ruling family of this small barony and he is a lesser son of this small noble family. As you might guess some things have happened during his absence and he gets involved, albeit somewhat reluctantly. The opposition is intelligent and a nice mix of supernatural and simple conventional self-interest and greed and there are multiple opposing forces, not one over-arching super-baddie.

What's refreshing is what it's not: It's also not a Zhent plot, not a Bane plot, not some weird new supervillain-esque shape-changing creature from another plane, it's not Cyric attempting to subvert the goddess of magic or Nethereese or Red Wizards or Drow or any of the other overused meta-plot bad guys from the swirling vortex of bad Forgotten Realms novels. There are no harpers. Elves have only a minimal influence on the story - primarily the training of the title character as Swordmages are an Elven thing. No Elminster. No Dracoliches. No Seven Sisters. No personal appearances by gods of any kind.

So if you would like to read a decent story about a normal D&D character type hero handling local problems in an interesting corner of the Realms threatened by local bad guys, then you will find this to be a good read.

Main Characters: Very nicely done. The motivations make sense and are not divinely inspired, the result of a curse, or imposed by an outside party. He's made a bad decision or two in the past and thinks about them at times but isn't tortured unreasonably by them. He's good at what he does but not unbeatable and not invulnerable.

Supporting Characters: Interesting and capable on their own, from the traveling companion to Geran's extended family they do have some distinct personalities. Sarth is not especially well defined but he is probably the smallest supporting role so I'm not terribly upset about it.

Plot: Impressive. Certain things I expected but I was regularly surprised by the timing of events and by some things that didn't happen that seemed to be inevitable. After reading many many fantsay novels, many of them terrible, I am rarely surprised by plot elements but I really like the way this one worked out and I was impressed by the way it all wrapped up. Not every plot hook was wrapped up by the end - there is clearly room for a sequel or two - but it came to a satisfying conclusion.

Action Scenes: Well done. The fights seem like they could happen in a game of D&D (important when writing a story based on a game) and the descriptions of the sword magic is well done - it could be useful to a player playing one in a campaign. There are some big battles in the book as well and they are well done too. I felt there was a Lord of the Rings movie influence at work but that is not a bad thing in my mind.

Resolution: Excellent. Many plots are resolved, some conflicts are settled, enough to feel like a complete story is in this book but with plenty of them left for further sequels. Nothing ridiculous happens to provide a convenient out for any major character, no deus ex machina or uncalled for deific intervention in other ways either.

Overall: Impressive. I'll be looking for the sequels now.

When Players Just Don't Get It - The Sequel

So...for the first time in 30 years of gaming I have a new player who has actively avoided joining the rest of the group not once but TWICE!

(If you haven't read my earlier posts around this topic they are here, here, and here. This will make more sense if you have read them.)

I don't mind taking an hour or two to work a new player into the game in an interesting way and making it memorable. In a Supers game especially, a new hero should enter dramatically. That didn't happen this time. Instead we wasted an hour plus on a new character NOT entering the game. This time it wasn't just me that was annoyed - the other players were actively annoyed and made it clear this was not a good idea. Several problems were evident:

1) The new player made a superhero. The game is called Necessary Evil because it's about Supervillains trying to throw off an alien invasion after the heroes are killed. The four current players all got this and made villains. Strike 1.

2) His character is basically built around money as a superpower. he's not an inventor, he doesn't have any special powers - he used his powers to beef up his stats and take 2 points of HTH attack (Martial Arts training). He bought a bunch of armor and guns and wants to be the billionaire playboy. Now I don't mind some of that and if he wants to spend two edges on it I'm perfectly willing to allow the trappings of that social level like a private jet, a nice car, a penthouse condo and a near-infinite wardrobe. However, it is not infinitely powerful. He wanted to have minions at his disposal, didn't want to have to pay for ammo for his Plasma Rifle, and most importantly didn't want to have to make skill rolls to make things happen. When I told him he couldn't just make a photographer appear at the restaurant with a phone call, he needed to make a persuasion check (or intimidate or some kind of knowledge roll - I'm pretty flexible on these things) he actually got annoyed that he was having to roll. He assumed that if he threw a bunch of money at the guy he would just automatically show up. I pointed out that he had already spent his starting funds on his guns and armor. He responded that he was Filthy Rich! I responded that yes he was and there was a number attached to that and he had already spent it! So he couldn't offer the guy some undefined amount of money and make him magically appear - he needed to make a roll and that would determine how things went. A lot of the game and my descriptions are driven off of these rolls - success = he shows up later; Raise = he happens to be in the neighborhood; 20+ = he's already right outside, what a stroke of luck! Roll a 1 (on both the skill die and the wild die) and guess what? He shows up because he happens to hate you and wants to do a smear job on you! things like that. So anyway, he wants to use Super Money as a diceless auto-succeed power in many situations and wants to argue when informed that isn't going to happen - Strike 2

3) Avoiding the player party in-game, attacking them, and then running away. These are all bad things and he did them twice. In the first session I dropped him in at the same location, let him know an overview of the situation (he had talked to the players between sessions too) and before he was ever attacked he started shooting at another PC. now comics and supers games have a long history of two good guys meeting for the first time, duking it out, then teaming up to fight a bad guy. I would have been fine with that. In this case he sees two one supervillain going after another supervillain, neither of which he has a personal connection to (according to his background - neither is mentioned) and he decides to shoot one of them. Then when that villain gets back up and comes after him he runs away. It's not heroic, it's not driven by background considerations, there's no personal grudge between these characters...nothing. No reason for this at all.

Despite this I gave him a second chance in the next session by reminding the party of the business card and they took it from there. The phone conversations and the restaurant meeting were all player-generated and I thought it was moving in a good direction. First warning sign - he leaves his armor and guns at home. So he's not going to fight well if discovered. OK, maybe he's going to be the peacemaker. Second warning sign - he stands up the bloodthirsty vampire girl. Not good. Then we moved into a series of dueling player skills to see who could get pictures and make a detective work roll to try and identify the other party first to get the drop on them. Unfortunately neither party really has the skills for this so lots of default rolls were being attempted and not much progress was made. Then sensing that he really had no idea what to do if he did ID them, he left right before being caught in the staged robbery. So once again, we have the new player avoiding a direct meeting with the party. This is not automatically bad - I'm fine with being mysterious, but he set up the meeting then avoided it! Then trying to one-up them with the spy games or hiding - and not just one, say "rival", member but the whole party. All this does is annoy or anger the other players - it doesn't bring out any background story or advance any plot, it just wastes time and worsens attitudes. Strike 3

4) The bonus round - After doing all this over 2 sessions, he realizes that he has walked out of the adventure for the rest of the night and starts making suggestions on how I can work him in!

"Hey maybe I'm a secret service agent protecting the family" things like that. Now he's full of ideas on how he might fit in to the upcoming mission. Only problem is there are no secret service with the family - they're all dead. This is specifically mentioned in the adventure and it's why the PC's need to go rescue the family in the first place., so I'm not inclined to change it, especially at this point in the evening.

"Well maybe I'm working for the government and I've been watching them so I contacted Dr. D to let him know-" No. Just no. Dr. Destruction doesn't need your help on this.

"Maybe Dr. D sent me in as reinforcements to the team" - no, because in your background you are a super hero, and he's not going to suddenly decide to add junior hero man to a team that's working well together and accomplishing missions already.

So yeah he got to watch the other players bust in, kick ass, rescue the first family, and get away. I didn't feel bad about it as he had at least two chances to join in and he didn't, so presumably he wanted to watch instead of play. Wish granted. Strike 4.

The bad thing here is that I actually like having one player who is a little out of sync with the rest of the team. It mixes things up and it's probably more true to the comics tradition than a fully-cohesive team would be anyway. But you have to be on the team to play that part and he just won't get there. Plus now the other players are irritated with the new player too and it's degrading the amount of fun we're having in the game. . He's not a first-time roleplayer - he's talked about 1st edition and 2nd edition D&D characters and other games so he should be able to make this work. It was worth a try but it's just not working out and I don't trust myself now not to take it personally if he avoided the party again. There's even an optional subplot in NE that I considered using him for but I just don't want to put the energy into it after the last 2 sessions.

So I'm going to un-invite him. I haven't had to do that in 15 years but after writing all this out I am not willing to waste part of another session trying to accommodate one player at the expense of 4 others and myself. I welcome any thoughts or comments any readers might have so feel free to sound off in the comments or in an email.

Necessary Evil - Session 7 - Other Peoples' Hostages

We open in Star City. The villains have returned home after a successful extraction of The Monolith from a monastery in Japan. The team decides to follow up on their strange encounter with "The Gray One" by calling the number on the business card he threw at them as he retreated. Nissa calls it and attempts to talk her way past the secretary who answers, but ends up frustrated that her mind control powers don't work over the phone. Eventually though, a meeting is set at The Olive Branch (a high-end Italian restaurant) for 8pm.

There is much maneuvering as 8:00 approaches as Nightblade and Night Terror stake out the establishment - they plan to make an example of this guy for taking a shot at Night Blade. MegaStrike waits nearby as backup for Nissa who will be heading inside to meet their quarry. Neither of them originally wanted to off Gray, but Nissa's frustration over the phone games played earlier has turned into a killing rage and she plans to make a meal of him at the very least.

The Gray One suspects an ambush so he hires an escort and goes in his secret identity of Gary Noe. He looks like just another customer to the casual observer (and he effectively is since all of his powers come from gear which he has decided to leave home for tonight). He has left a message for Nissa at the desk noting that he can't make it but that he has paid for her meal. Then he sits down to observe the crowd.

The message does not help Nissa's attitude and she suspects something is going on. She orders the others to stage a robbery so she can examine everyone more closely, glamouring them if necessary. This is about the same time Gray decides to leave and he manages to slip out with his rent-a-date before MegaStrike can smash in the front door. He does call the police on his way to his car though. The team goes ahead and robs the place anyway, netting about $5,000.

Frustrated over not finding The Gray One the group is somewhat relieved when Dr. Destruction calls them and asks them to rescue some hostages - namely the first family of the United States. They have been in hiding since the invasion but the V'Sori have finally caught them and are holding them in an old state police barracks near Boston. He wants them recovered alive and brought to the warehouse. There are only 3 members left - the president's wife, daughter, and granddaughter and he is leaving extraction and transportation up to the team.

The group rents a van (Nissa glamours the attendant) and heads for Boston. They find the building where the hostages and observe it quietly for an hour. There is a single transport parked outside, one alien "Manta" fighter craft, and half a dozen drones standing guard on the roof and near the vehicles. The only entrance appears to be the front door.

Being a "Plan A" kind of team Night Terror phases out and drifts into the Manta fighter and starts it up. As the guards look up, he begins firing at them with the ship's guns. This is the signal for MegaStrike and he smashes a new door through the back wall of the building which Night Blade and Nissavin use to enter the place. The drones outside the building are quickly dispatched by fighter pilot Night Terror while the fin troopers inside the place are just as quickly dispatched by fang, katana, and radioactive punch. Nissa charms a guard and has him lead the team to the first family, who are in the center of the building.

In the main detention area a battle royale takes place as the V'Sori Warlord who captured the family and his elite fin guards fight to the death to protect their career-making prizes. the mental blasting and stunning powers of the warlord are a new threat for the team and they spend much of the fight being stunned or trying to shake it off. Night Blade blows open the front of the building in an effort to help, stopping some reinforcements, but then decides that's too dangerous to his allies and stays on cover duty outside. The fins are handled one by one until only the warlord is left and he finally falls to a savage thrust from Night Blade.

The cell is broken open and the first family, though a little shaken by what's happened and what's still happening goes along with them. Night Terror lands the fighter and sets the engines on overload, joining the team inside as they race through the building and out the back, jumping into the van and heading home as the building is engulfed in a huge explosion.

It's another job well-done for the Plan A Team.

DM notes:

• The whole episode with the Gray One was my second attempt to get the new player to join the team. as you might have guessed from the description, he didn't. Again. more on this tomorrow.
• The main focus of the evening was supposed to be rescuing the first family and that's where we spent the majority of the time. The game ran somewhat later than usual because of the restaurant business but everyone did well and as far as I can tell had a good time with that part. They came up with a decent plan, made it work, and achieved their goal with no casualties on their side.
• I say everyone but I mean my 4 original players. The new guy didn't have much to do because he walked his character right out of the team in the first part of the evening. Sorry, I can only spend so much game time catering to one player. When you actively avoid joining the rest of the party, and go so far as to jack with them, practically taunting them, before running off, I don't think you have a right to complain when you don't have anything to do the rest of the session.
• Overall I feel good about the system and the campaign. It plays fast and loose and I am enjoying the DMing part of this quite a bit. I have decided to make a cheat sheet for Savage Worlds to make sure my players have options in front of them as I think they could do more with grappling, tricks, and wild attacks than they have. Plus it's easier to keep track of modifiers when they are on one sheet in front of you rather than scattered throughout the book.
• Next up will probably be some underwater adventuring... Atlantis Awaits!