Between Campaigns

[drcpunk]

As mnemex said, Cthulhupunk: Twenty Years After, aka Cthulhupunk Plus Twenty, had its final formal full face-to-face session. mnemex would like a final final session, but I don't think that will happen.

I don't plan to start up a campaign until after we return from WorldCon and MythCon, and I'm not sure I'll even get in a one-shot playtest of various games I have. I'm debating several post-WorldCon options.

I could start a Cthulhupunk campaign set either immediately after or a year or two after the close of Plus Twenty. This would involve recruiting another player or two and having any continuing players create new PCs. Maybe school kids.

I could start a Cthulhupunk campaign set twenty, thirty, a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand years later. My original plan with Plus Twenty was to keep jumping forward, modeling the Babylon 5 season 4 closer.

I could run something different. Dogs in the Vineyard, perhaps.

Or maybe Blue Rose, with a background that makes me itch to tweak it for something I find more consistent, plausible, and open to the kinds of tangled plots I like. I might even try to keep the system. I'd been looking for what I'd dubbed "d20 remedial", and the Blue Rose system seems to fit the bill. That might even get me writing a review of the book, although it's not a requirement, as I bought the book, rather than being given it to review.

Or, I could try to run an anime game. I got my money's worth and then some from BESM's Hearts Swords Flowers, and I've gotten hooked on Yami no Matsuei. And I have enjoyed Revolutionary Girl Utena, as well as Hellsing. I'll probably crack and buy Tokyo Babylon as well. I could enjoy running a season of something shoujo. (Okay, Hellsing isn't shoujo, I think, but you get the idea. Is it shonen?)

mnemex said that if I go with that option, I should craft a premise. Sure, the players might want to change it, but even that is easier when there is something concrete to change. I even have a premise in mind, inspired by Kage Baker's novel, Anvil of the World, though I doubt I'd use her world. (I suppose I could do Cthulhupunk anime style, but to a degree, I probably do.)

I'm not sure what system I'd use, though. I do not like crunchy. BESM, GURPS, HERO, Feng Shui, and such are all Right Out. I could probably handle FUDGE, but my memories of it in agrumer's otherwise quite enjoyable Wander Angels game was of combat being a long, drawn out matter of getting nibbled to death by ducks.

I like OTE, but, while I could probably make it work, that's because I'm comfortable with it. It isn't especially suited to anime, I think. Everway isn't suited to it as it stands, though Beth thinks minor tweaks would make it work. Dogs in the Vineyard probably doesn't have the right feel to it, even if both DitV and animk can combine moral choices with frontier combat. mnemex said that DitV tends to draw out every combat longer than I'd probably like. He may be correct. He's looking at Wu shu, which doesn't sound like quite the right feel to me. If I did Blue Rose anime style, I could use its d20 system, but I'm not sure that feels right either.

Comments

[avram]

I wasn’t using the default Fudge system. Vanilla Fudge is both more complicated and more, well, dry and generic than what I was using.

If you run an anime game with combat, I recommend using a fortune-before-description system like Dogs in the Vineyard or (maybe) Castle Falkenstein. That way a player with good dice/cards in hand can narrate a snazzy combat move with confidence that it’ll actually come out that way. And you want your players to be able to handle the snazzy combat narration, because it’s one of your weak spots.

Josh was serious about a final-final session? I thought he was just being rhetorical, like somebody who’s had a bad day wishing for an undo button. I’m not inclined towards another session.

[mneme]

Nah -- was serious, if funny-serious -- I realized considering the "final" session that it didn't feel like a final session, so I kinda wanted another one with more "final" and less "wrapping up loose threads".

If people don't want another, that's cool, though.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Yah, he was, though I didn't think you'd want one, and I told him I'd only run one if everyone did.

So, do you think DitV would work? Would it not slow things down too much?

How well d'ya think Falk would work?

[avram]

Dogs is about mechanized conflicts. The traditional Lisa C’Punk gaming style is about avoiding mechanized conflicts.

I’ve never played C Falk, so I don’t know how it works in practice.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Hm. Falk and/or DitV might also work as fortune-before-description for snazzy dialogue in social combat, allowing players to help me cut short conversations that start to drag. Or, as mnemex put it, GMs should curtail their desire to roleplay too much. Hey, mnemex, you should write that up for your A&E zine.

[avram]

Actually, I find conversational conflicts the most difficult part of DitV. In normal RPGs you worry about two things: (1) Comics up with cool stuff to say, and (2) advancing your (or your character’s) agenda while saying it. In Dogs you also have to worry about whether what you’r saying is a Block, Reversal, or Taking the Blow.

[mneme]

Yeah, probably—it's one of those obvious things that is worth saying. Though, of course, it's true about not-GMing players too, to a lesser extent—it comes down to the "you are responsible for what your character does; you can't pass things off on 'I'm just roleplaying'" principle.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Not just that. It's not just a matter of not being able to use "I'm just roleplaying" as an excuse. It's also an acknowlegement that even in a session of an rpg, there is such a thing as too much roleplaying.

If a player or a gm drags the dialogue on a bit too long, it doesn't necessarily mean that either is trying to hog the spotlight or excuse bad behavior. It may mean that one has forgotten the game part of roleplaying games -- I'm not sure if this is the same as the Gamist aspect. But, do you see what I'm getting at here? I'm not sure I'm explaining it as well as you might.

[mylescorcoran]

Risus is another possibility, close to Over the Edge mechanically and therefore possibly easy for you to get into, but with a few more tweakable bits to customise to your preferences. I highly recommend The Risus Companion too, as it's got lots on tailoring rules for style as well as being a good, fun read. Accepting that I don't know a lot about anime, I'd think it could work nicely for an anime game.

Look at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm and http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus-companion.htm for details.