The real world has done a very good job of disrupting our gaming schedule thus far in the new year, however tonight a shining beacon rose on the horizon in the form of a Gamma World game for my normal D&D group.

The Good

Most of the group was very excited for Gamma World, specifically the guys who were familiar with previous editions.  Everyone came with their creative hats on, and character creation was a blast (just as it was with our last excursion into Gamma Terra).  We had several memorable characters in the group last night, my favorites being a Seismic/Empath named Briq, who was a mutant comprised of trapped souls inside of a brick wall from a foundry, and a redneck Plant/Cockroach named Six who drives a rusty pickup truck and opts to chew anything he finds on the ground like chewing tobacco.  Six happens to have several other charming characteristics, none of which I feel like detailing in the polite company of my readers at this time.

The other players in our group presented some strong character concepts, but I will defer speaking about their qualities until another time.

The Bad / The Ugly

Once again, character creation took far too long due to the lack of multiple copies of the rulebook.  Pro Tip: think ahead and make copies of the mutant traits and powers (I wish I had!)  Our game got off to a slow start as a result, and thanks to cramped space on the Gamma World Character Sheet a few of our unfamiliar players were waning in enthusiasm by the beginning of the actual game play.  Thankfully, we were saved by the colorful characters that had been created and started things off with a “getting to know you” roundtable that got everyone re-energized.

Here’s another tip from the trenches: spend a little time with box set prior to playing with a group.  The backstory for the provided adventure is a little sparse and there’s not a great deal of motivation for the players to actually follow the plot hooks provided in the campaign preamble.  Both times I have attempted to run this story, the group had retreated into the village for information and I was left somewhat flat-footed.  Ultimately, everyone ended up in the right place and the fun could begin.  I found a few additional clunky spots in the first two encounters, but nothing a little deft DM magic couldn’t spackle over.

Conclusions

Gamma World is fun, however it didn’t seem to be everyone’s cup of tea at our gaming table tonight.  A few members of our party are definitely excited to play more, but there were an indifferent few that will be unlikely to grace Gamma Terra again for awhile.  There were a few additional moving parts in the Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech that confused or perturbed some and excited others, it was pretty interesting to see these two factions plead their case.

As with any other roleplaying game, it seems that predispositions played a big role.  Those that were excited about the game at the beginning enjoyed it, those that were lukewarm or newcomers enjoyed it markedly less.  Personally, I love the randomness of the setting and the propensity toward creative characters that can be strongly roleplayed.  That keeps me coming back. If you want to see more Gamma World coverage, check out this great review over at Geeks Dream Girl or the positively astounding amount of material at Critical-Hits (including the mysterious and powerful Junkulator!)

More soon!

Happy New Year from StupidRanger!  We’re all very excited for the coming year, which will include both personal and gaming related changes.  As previously reported, Stupid Ranger and I will be welcoming a baby girl into the world in late March.  This is likely to impact our gaming schedule dramatically, but thanks to several friends with flexible schedules (and a tolerance for kids) we should be able to continue gaming as much as humanly possible.

Here’s the current line-up for 2011:

• My D&D campaign continues (along with Stupid Ranger), firmly entrenched in the Paragon Tier.
• The Deadlands campaign that I am playing in will carry on, so more Weird West action can be expected.
• I received Low Life for Christmas, a strange Savage World setting by Andy Hopp that I want to play this year.  (More on this one soon!)
• Much, much more Gamma World.

Stupid Ranger chimes in with her lone gaming resolution: “I want to play Dragon Age 2 as much as possible before the baby comes.”  Seeing as how the baby is due on March 26, that might be a tall order!

Is there something else you want us to write about or cover this year?  Mention it in the comments and we’ll see what we can do!

We were stuck in the bowels of Lost Angels, helpin’ an acquaintance find his lost buddy when some bad varmits got the drop on the ol’ Starr Gang.  I got separated from the group thanks to my insides briefly becoming outsides thanks to a deadeyed bandit and his Colt .45 Peacemaker.  Thanks to all them extra meals and a little bit of luck, I was only shot in the guts enough to take me halfway to the Reaper and was able to drag myself inside an old boarded up mercantile to escape death’s icy grip for a few more minutes.

That’s the thing about fightin’ with the Book of Hoyle on your side… sometimes the cards just plain don’t come up your way.  I’d already expended what little favor I had gained with the manitou that sits on the other side of the shade from me, and I couldn’t catch a break.  The last failed attempt at hexslingin’ fried me so bad I can’t even bring myself to handle my deck of cards right now, but that’s a story for another time.

After the ruckus quieted down outside my hideout, I was able to wrap up my wounds enough to go out searchin’ for the rest of my gang.  I came around the corner and that’s when I saw one of the damnedest sights I’ve ever seen… my cousin Dustin, writhin’ around on the ground like the Devil himself had him by the ears.  Then I saw why… he’d been shot bad.  He’d seen the bad end of another Peacemaker, and this one got him… well… polite company calls it the unmentionables, but others call ‘em Rocky Mountain Oysters, Juevos Rancheros, the ol’ Family Jewels.  And they was shot plumb off.

He was lucky to be alive, but all the same it’s hard to console a man whose manhood was now a fine paste on the boardwalk in front of a saloon.  I was able to wrap him up enough to prevent him from dyin’, but they’ll be callin’ him Stumpy from here on out.  Life in the Weird West is a bitch sometimes.

Today I was thrilled to join a group of my friends in our first Gamma World game.  I am pleased to report that not only was I impressed, it exceeded expectations on the Grand Unified Fun Scale.  Here’s just a few reasons why:

Character Generation

As I postulated yesterday, character creation was a really fun aspect of the game.  We opted for the traditional no-holds-barred random character generation to excellent results.  Our party consisted of:

• A mind breaker / plant hybrid
• A highly intelligent yeti android with only three Charisma
• A human-sized felinoid / cockroach named Mittens St. Cloud
• A plant / gravity controller clad in cast-off street signs
• A rat swarm / empath named Thwack

Before character creation was even complete, the group was brainstorming ideas about how their characters would act.  “Can a length of highway guardrail be a heavy melee weapon?”  Absolutely.  Can my yeti android communicate by angry yelling even though he is Intelligent?” Sure he can!  “Can Mittens St. Cloud have a monocle?  Of course he can!  And so forth.  I didn’t even have a character to roll and I was already enjoying the carnage.

There were some confusing aspects, which were compounded by only two of us having the rulebooks from our box sets to go around.  There were some questions about whether we had healing surges or how that worked, and some digging around in the rules indicated that healing was stripped down even compared to 4e D&D (which was fine).  The skill bonuses were slightly confusing, with many wondering if they got BOTH skill bonuses from your origins or just one.  We worked that out fairly quickly, but the character sheet wasn’t extremely clear on some of those details.

Gameplay

Gameplay was very reminiscent of 4e D&D.  The provided adventure is a series of combat encounters (so far, we only made it through three combats) but the players made up several creative solutions.  No, they didn’t want to just open the locked tower doors… let’s have the android yeti ram their pickup truck into it while yelling furiously!  Naturally, that approach worked and they made quite an entrance into encounter number two.  The presence of largely improvised weaponry (outside of the Omega Tech) and random junk to use in their adventure lends a MacGuyver-esque quality to the game.  The players enjoyed finding random junk alongside their Omega Tech treasure, and made heavy use of their Alpha mutations to help them dispatch the angry band of mutant badger guards.

There has been some controversy around the trading card aspect of Gamma World.  I think they enhance the game, but are unnecessary to enjoy the game itself.  Matt, one of our players, generously donated each player (and myself) a Gamma World booster pack.  I matched this donation so each player could pull from their own Alpha mutation and Omega Tech deck, and I think they enjoyed having their own cards to use.  One player said “I’m attached to these mutations, so I sure hope you don’t want these cards back at the end!” so clearly there is some enjoyment to be had there.

First Impressions

In short, I am a Gamma World fan.  It breeds irreverent, fun, laugh-ridden game sessions with unique characters that change as much as the whims of our players.  It is fun to run, because of the creativity caused by random junk and the use of alpha mutations.  The rule system is lightweight and open to some interpretation which keeps the game light and enjoyable to everyone, there wasn’t a lot of digging around in the rulebook to figure out how things should behave (this was helped by the fact that most of our players were experienced in 4e).

I’ll be playing a LOT more Gamma World as the months tick by.  I hope that expansions for the game are plentiful, and it would be GREAT if we could buy the rulebook on its own for casual player characters to use during character creation.  I really want to play this game with Vanir, I can imagine that the fruits of his brain would lend themselves well to Gamma Terra.  In the meantime, you can check out the great Gamma World coverage over at Critical-Hits if you need more of a fix.

More soon!

It’s been a bit sparse here at StupidRanger lately, but for very good reason: we’ve been gaming A LOT. Between our Wednesday night DM Revolution games, the periodic Deadlands adventure, and our normal D&D campaign we’ve been doing a lot of roleplaying and I am happy to report that Saturday marks my first excursion into Gamma World.

This recent revival of the Gamma World game has been a very exciting happening here in Colorado, several of my cohorts ran out and bought the box set immediately but we haven’t had the collective time to actually sit down and play it.  I am a bit of a latecomer to the party, having only picked up the box set when it became apparent that the duties of actually running the game were going to fall to me.  I visited Black & Read (one of my friendly local gaming stores), grabbed the box, ripped into it and am excited that tomorrow is the big day to finally get to experience the joy, wonder, and hilarious mutations that makes Gamma World so unique.

First Impressions

The box itself is really great, with a comic styled nuclear waste motif.  The rulebook is very concise, interesting, and lighthearted bringing a lot of the irreverent  flavor of Gamma World through.  At first look, character generation appears to be a BLAST.  In fact, it is one of the things I am looking forward to most tomorrow.  The possibilities, coupled with the urging that all character generation take place by randomly rolling on a chart is a great mechanic to me.  It seems as if it will keep the players from the urge to min/max their characters, and seems to be a very creative process.

The game takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where several realities have collapsed into one.  This causes terrible, interesting, or hilarious mutations to occur on a regular basis and has caused the rise of both high technology and strange creatures (human-sized insane rabbits, anyone?).  The provided Alpha Mutation and Omega Tech cards provide the mutagenic variety to the play experience, and have the possibility of expansion by purchasing booster packs with new mutations and tech (this seems to be completely unnecessary, but could be fun).  Basically, it seems like this game was borne directly from the brain of our good buddy Vanir.

Gameplay is based strongly on D&D 4e and presented in a format similar to the D&D Essentials line.  The stat blocks are simplified, the box comes with both maps and tokens to represent both players and bad guys, and the whole thing just looks like a lot of fun.

Tomorrow we are going to descend on our game shop, roll up some mutants, and have at the game.  Check back soon for further impressions and stories from the front!

Tonight was the first of my two sessions of the DM Revolution at Total Escape Games.  I was pretty nervous since this was my first time filling the role of Dungeon Master for a new group since I moved out here to Colorado.  I arrived at the game shop early, just as the current session of D&D Encounters was finishing.  Most of my players arrived promptly, so we were quickly underway.

What I Planned

The progenitor of DM Revolution, Justin (of Wombat Cast) encouraged us to be creative and go outside the box to try new concepts.  I decided that I wanted to try to run a roleplaying heavy set of sessions that included primarily Skill Challenges in lieu of combat.  I primarily used the notion of branching skill challenges to set up my plotline for these short sessions.  For tonight’s game, I had a three sets of branching skill challenges that would allow the players to pursue different avenues and two nested skill challenges.  (You can find excellent examples of how to structure branching skill challenges and nested skill challenges can be found at At-Will.)

I have never run a session with a goal of using all Skill Challenges, nor did I know if the group would be receptive to this type of game.

The Way It Went Down

The group followed only two of the “hooks” to these skill challenges directly, however they ended up at two others in a roundabout fashion.  Most of these Skill Challenges were designed to disseminate information, and one of our characters even came up with a creative “off-script” skill to use that resulted in success.  The group readily dove into roleplay, and much of the session was them interacting with both my planned NPC characters and some impromptu NPCs that they chose to interact with.

That was the best part of this experience… the players helped to write the story.  It happened that I used the revised Skill Challenge chart to allow the group to make their own encounters as they interacted with people of their choosing.  In fact, they even went into a few encounters expecting to have to fight based on the information they received during partial successes.  Thanks to not going in guns-blazing, they were able to roleplay their way to most of the rest of the available information.

The session ended up with an opportunity for a Skill Challenge that I suspected would turn to combat and it did (bandits running away from a smash/grab job are too tempting to chase).  Just as the game shop was closing, the group defeated most of the bandits (leaving one alive for questioning).  This led them to an unexpected ending for this session, but it sets up nicely for what I have planned next week.

In Conclusion

Skill Challenges are great for encouraging roleplay.  Using branching and nested skill challenges helps to outline a plot nicely, but still allows the players for enough deviation as not to feel extremely “on rails.”  I suspect some of the players tired a little of all the roleplaying, which is why I strongly recommend having some Skill Challenges that can devolve into combat if the group wants that.

I feel like we had a session that was wildly successful with mostly Skill Challenges.  The roleplaying was fun, people were laughing and creatively using their abilities and the players helped me to write the story.  A man can’t ask for much more than that!  I will be continuing down this avenue for next week’s session, but I plan to up the ante.

I’m participating in a very interesting experiment at our local gaming shop.  A quick straw-poll of the regulars revealed that the majority of us were nonplussed with the latest D&D Encounters chapter, so we opted to do an Encounters-style series all of our own.  It’s called the DM Revolution, and the rules are simple and go a little like this:

• Our characters began at level 11 with a small treasure parcel of gear.
• Each DM gets to run two weeks of encounters, each 1.5 hours in length.
• Creativity is encouraged in encounter design.
• It’s open to everyone, players can circulate in and out as their schedules permit.

The Campaign So Far

The campaign started out with an escape from a prison, which was later revealed to be a floating fortress guarded by a young dragon.  After exiting the compound, we traded with some roving merchants that had docked a floating boat near the edge of the cloud fortress but before we could negotiate safe passage we were attacked by young giantlike creatures.

The merchants escaped largely unscathed, but didn’t stop to take our group with them.  After wandering around the desolate floating fortresses region and nearly starving, we came across another docked floating airship inhabited by savage traders that attempted to poison and then kill us.

We got the upper hand, and succeeded in boarding and then crashing the airship into a barn outside of Waterdeep.  Last week’s encounter thwarted the owner of the barn, which was breeding demon horses for a reason not fully known. (I missed this session, so the details are unclear).

Now it’s my turn…

Starting next Wednesday, it’s my turn to pick up this strange storyline and put my own twist on it.  Our group tends to be fairly combat heavy and I have heard some complaints that there is not enough roleplaying, so I think that I want to do something more roleplay centered and skill challenge based.  The group is a very funny, raucous group of people and I feel like they’d react well to a chance to really be in character and not have to just kill things to pass the sessions.

So let’s collaborate together!  If you’ve got an interesting plot idea based on the synopsis above or some recommendations for creating short and satisfying roleplaying encounters for a group of around 6 players chime in!  I’d love to get some creative input or some advice.

I was lucky enough to run into one of my buddies at the game shop on Saturday, he had just picked up the Deadlands Marshal’s Handbook.  We’re playing in a Deadlands campaign together, and we have agreed to rotate the duties of Marshal so that anyone who wants to have a turn at it can.  This meant that it was fairly inevitable that I pick up the Marshal’s Handbook when it hit store shelves, but I was going to wait until next month.  Then my buddy let me leaf through his copy for a few minutes, and I couldn’t resist picking one up for myself.

For starters, I find the Weird West setting one of the more interesting settings I have come across in current roleplaying games.  It mixes fantasy with some anachronism and references to real historical figures, and this adds up to me always wanting to read more of the mythology.  It seems that in the old edition of Deadlands (which I played only briefly in college) there were several expansion books that gave the system a very rich history that evolved over time, and my hope is that they continue to do this with the new edition.

Curiosity got the best of me in this case, and I have to say I was excited (and terrified) to find that the Prairie Tick is included in the Marshal’s Handbook.  These critters provided one of the most insane total party kills that I have ever been witness to… a small group of ticks ambushed my college adventuring party and killed EVERYONE in fairly short order.  Reading through their description, not much has changed with the new edition… unfortunately it would be metagaming like mad if my current character just toted around a quart of castor oil!

This likely won’t be the last time I write about this book or our Deadlands campaign.  So far getting into Savage Worlds has been interesting, with any luck my skills at D&D Dungeon Mastering will translate well to this new setting and system.

Today I participated in my fifth session of Living Forgotten Realms at Total Escape Games.  My fighter, Maxwell Edison, took to the mean streets of Baldur’s Gate for Silent Streets and Vanished Souls and it was a pretty interesting experience.  I was the only defender in the group, therefore my role was to soak massive amounts of damage while the striker and controller types did their things.  Our group did a fairly decent job of using strategy to our advantage in the combat encounters, which was fairly impressive since two of our players were first-timers to D&D 4e.  There was even the opportunity for some roleplaying during the skill challenges, which always pleases me.

Our DM was a little unfamiliar with the adventure so there was a bit of delay as he got comfortable with the information he was to disseminate during the skill challenges but it didn’t detract much from the game itself.  The combat encounters were very intense, at one point my character and one other were unconscious and bleeding and thanks to some valiant attacks and strategic use of Action Points we were able to win the day.

I enjoy the dynamic of being in a new area of Forgotten Realms with each small adventure, so far the plot of the adventures have been interesting enough to keep me coming back for more.  It’s also good to be able to game with groups of different players.  This table was primarily a mix of new people, but luckily the DM from our last encounters session was at my table so I knew there was at least one person that I enjoyed gaming with present.  That still didn’t prevent the inevitable awkward social situations that occur at the gaming table sometimes, but I’ll leave that topic for another article.

Living Forgotten Realms continues to be interesting, so I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next session and hopefully I can get Maxwell up to Level 4!  More soon!

Tonight was game night with some of my friends from Total Escape Games.  We opted for my first foray into Savage Worlds, specifically Deadlands Reloaded.  I had originally played Deadlands back in college with my dormmates and I am pleased to report that it is very much the same game with slightly simpler mechanics.  We were beginning to get the gist of combat and gameplay after just a few short hours, and I was already beginning to identify ways I would make my own character differently to maximize my enjoyment (we used pre-generated characters for this introductory game).

I played “Shady” Doug Liveaux, a New Orleans huckster.  The huckster class is very interesting and still retained my favorite gameplay mechanic of the old Deadlands game: casting spells by drawing a poker hand and assessing the result.  I don’t know if they included these mechanics in the old system and we just didn’t know it, but as the game progressed we realized that you could counteract wounds with Vigor rolls.  This significantly reduced the high mortality rate that I experienced in previous incarnations of Deadlands, and you could always use Fate Chips to shake off wounds as well.  I was pleased that despite some difficult run-ins with manitou’s during spellcasting, “Shady” made it out of the night largely intact.

I enjoy the tactile experience of this game, being able to shuffle a deck of cards and play with poker chips really increased the immersion for me.  The one-sheet campaign that our DM ran us through was interesting and helped us learn the mechanics with just the right amount of storyline to follow.  Next week we’re going to generate our own characters that will carry on into an ongoing Deadlands campaign, where we will trade off the Marshalling (i.e. Dungeon Mastering) duties.

The Savage Worlds game mechanics take a bit of getting used to if you’re as used to D&D as I am, however I found it equally easy to get ramped up and learn the basics within one session as I could in D&D 4e.  I’m enjoying the change of pace, so expect to see the occasional Savage Worlds related post (perhaps some compare and contrast) as the weeks march by.