The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Dragon Age Style

I recieved my box set for Dragon Age Set 1 in the mail on Saturday.  It was full of the promise of the original Red Box all over again.  

Surprisingly (or maybe not) my 10 year old became entranced by the players guide.  I'm not so hot on the dark fantasy aspect, but the presentation of information is really well done.  1 page each for the character types - mage, rogue, and warrior.  A 1/2 page spread of weapons next to the weapons list.  A 1/3 or so page of armor.  Plenty to absorb even if you ignore the dark fantasy setting and backstory.

By Sunday he had decided he needed to be a rogue, scoured the map and picked out a city to be from, and was suitably excited.  Not wanted the excitement to wane (and man do I overthink things sometime), I pushed ahead blindly.  I run lots of indie narativist games off the cuff with little planning, but they generally have experienced players who carry their own end of the story/want different stuff out of games that wouldn't interest a 10 year old.  And not having gamed with kids too much, I was a bit lost as to what type of adventure to begin with.  Then I remembered a box I had with my old D&D modules and the light dawned.  What better place to start than the same place I did.

I wanted to find "Keep on the Borderlands", having fond memories of that module, but alas it was not in my trove.  A ragged copy of  "In Search of the Unknown" was considered, but discarded along with a better kept copy of "The Village of Hommlet" because I would need to read them through to prep, and he wanted to get playing that evening.  Then I found "U1 - The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh", and the parties fate was sealed.  They would be travelling to that same haunted house overlooking the sea, that I had many years ago.  U1 is nicley divided into an intro portion delaing with just the haunted house, and another probably 1/2 of the book dealing with what the players ultimately find there.  It also has some decent box text I could easily paraphrase without much prep.

That evening Mom the mage, the rouge, and his older brother the fighter wandered into Saltmarsh and began to literally kick in the doors of the haunted house.  A snake, a pack of giante cetipedes, and a magic trap or too later, it was the rogues bedtime.  Spells were cast, monsters vanquished, and the first floor of the haunted house cleared.  It was glorious.  Both to see his enthusiasm, have the whole family play, and in having a simple system that generated exciting play at the table.

For session 2 I will probably prep a little more to make the monsters a bit more deadly.  Honestly 1st level characters in DA feel way more competent than 1st level AD&D characters from back in the day.  I think only 1 of them actually took any reasonable damage, and even then it wasn't enough to not be easily healed.

Dragon Age is swiftly becoming my favorite trad system.  Many thanks to the folks at Green Ronin for making such an awesome game.

Real Steel: Round 2

More in that mode of giant fighty robots with the eye of the tiger:

Let's say you want something a little more original than just Real Steel, the RPG. Or maybe you don't like the fighting-by-proxy element of the source. Or [spoiler alert] maybe you have a low tolerance for adorable hip-hop dancing moppets.

So then, fighty robots with some human skin in the game. Let's merge (heh) Real Steel with Transformers. The contenders are drivers. They build and race futuristic Formula 1 style single-seater racecars. These cars can transform at need into a sort of robotic powersuit around their drivers. Car and driver participate in brutal street races in which parts of the course have to be negotiated in powersuit mode, while other parts are better handled in car mode. It's up to each driver to hotswitch modes when they think best. Rules are few, and injuries are many. Picture fast, furious street racing combined with crazy robotic parkour stunts and smash-mouth martial arts fighting. So really it's Real Steel meets Transformers meets Speed Racer meets District B13.

You can still do this with Contenders or Piledrivers & Powerbombs. It'll take a little more effort to reskin, though. If you're feeling really wealthy and creative, try running the people scenes with Smallville, PTA or your other favorite relationship drama system, while running the robot action in heavily-houseruled Mechaton.

Real Steel

I just saw Real Steel in IMAX on a whim. I didn't even get halfway through the movie without realizing: you could do this with Contenders. It wouldn't take much reskinning. More later, when I've had actual sleep.

Dirty Jobs: Underdark edition

This idea started when I caught my first episode of Dirty Jobs in quite a while. What if you combined that ugly, gritty, see-how-the-sausage-is-made attitude with The Wire's sense of real, imperfect people trying to do a hard job? And what if you threw in some deconstruction of D&D fantasy tropes?

The only "people" living in the Underdark who are halfway decent and halfway committed to keeping the place livable are the dwarves. They keep to themselves and build to last, but there are all kinds of things out there in caverns natural and unnatural that would eat your soul as soon as look at you. Someone has to see to it that a stray Purple Worm doesn't burrow into a dwarven creche and eat up all the little beardless kids. Someone has to keep those nasty illithids and their weird gods in check. That someone is you. It may not pay well, it'll certainly get you covered in some nasty substance or other, and your life expectancy will be shorter than a goblin's. But you're making the undermountain safe for all dwarvenkind.

Picture a fire team of dwarves with steampunky flamethrowers strapped to their backs, clearing out a nest of carrion crawlers. Picture a sergeant or foreman in back of them, shouting advice and insults around a huge cigar stub. And just to make it fun, let's say those carrion crawlers invaded from some alternate dimension full of nasty, inimical things. C'mon, you can't tell me carrion crawlers don't have at least a little Lovecraft in them.

Take every fantasy rpg trope about dwarves and underground critters and merge them with gritty, slice of life television. The players are a team of troubleshooters armed with clunky, dangerous technology and sent out to keep dwarven homes safe from the awful, awful things out there in the dark. If you're low on awful things, go pull out some old-school rpg supplements. Any of those weird monsters like otyughs and rust monsters can be scary and nasty if you describe them right.

Possible systems: I'd do this in Reign or Savage Worlds, but you could work it into D&d (3E or prior), Warhammer fantasy, Pathfinder, or Fantasycraft. If you're willing to do a little prep work, The Shadow of Yesterday would work if you grit up the pool recovery rules.