Monday Night Mordheim: Co-Operation & Betrayal

Welcome back to Monday Night Mordheim.

One of my favorite things about Mordheim isn't even in the core book. Chaos on the Streets matches. You can find these rules in different places, I believe they are most notable in the 2002 Annual, which really was the last thing of importance to be added to the game.

Chaos in the Streets are big multiplayer games, and they work considerably better then most other game's multiplayer games. While it is added after the initial creation, it doesn't feel that way. The rules are very clear cut and handled in a way that makes sense. While seeming to be Byzantine in the beginning, after a bit of thought and a trial run or two, they become intuitive and natural. While that is well and good, the real strength of the Chaos in the Streets match is the interaction between players.

 The interaction is the key, alliances and betrayals. Everyone is in it for themselves first and foremost, but in the Chaos on the Streets matches, its all about making the best deal in the short term before slaughtering your foe. To be really successful in a Chaos on the Streets match, you have to co-operate. You have to join forces to accomplish anything worth while. If you try to stick it out on your own, others will gang up on you and gank you before you have a chance to do anything. Odd numbers in this type of match will make for some strange alliances, and it stays surprisingly even above 3 man matches. That being said, you have to get together with someone, at the very least to increase your survivability. Without some sort of co-operation, there are several different Chaos on the Streets matches that you can't win until extremely late in a campaign.

While Co-operation is important in the beginning of the match, the key thing to learn is when to turn on your allies. While it is technically possible to share a win with someone, it really isn't that much fun. The important thing is to know when you can turn the tables. It is a fine balancing act. You have to know when to strike. Too early and your former friend is too powerful, too late and they strike first. Striking that balance is a hard skill to learn, and even harder to master.

There's a few key things to keep in mind before you turn.
1. Is the alliance still beneficial to you? Is there some thing that you are getting that you wouldn't otherwise? This might be as simple as keeping your friends Rat Ogre occupied with other people, to them providing covering fire.
2. Will your soon to be former mate benefit more from turning on you in the next round? This is important. If they stand to gain quite a bit, you might want to turn on them before they get a chance to.
3. Is your business with the other players that you aren't allied with done? If the other others are still up and running, and still strongly allied, it might not be the best time to turncoat.
4. Will this piss the other guy off? Probably the stupidest and best reason to do it. Sometimes when you play a wargame, you get the chance to be a dick. Take advantage of it when it will be appreciated, not when it isn't.  You won't get many chances to be a total douche and your friends congratulate you for it.

Well, that's all I got for this week. Next week I think I'll talk about the different types of Chaos on the Streets and some of the additional tactics you can use with them. Unless I forget and write about something else entirely. Which is always possible.

Monday Night Mordheim: Extra Rules

Hello, and welcome back to Monday Night Mordheim. Things are turning over nicely around here, got the schedules all settled, and everything is going well with everything getting back in the groove. It's all about the planning. I get the stuff done. School is easy, its the other stuff that's hard.

See, that's the thing I like, the other stuff. Scouts, and that sort of thing. That's why one of my absolutly favorite things about Mordheim is the optional critical hit table. The thing is that a lot of people choose not to use it. There's two main reasons for that. The first is that it is optional, which means a lot of people skip over it. The second reason is that some people feel that some of the optional critical hit table is not as powerful as the regular one.

The thing is that the second group is right. I've always been in the mind that the optional critical hit table is what was really intended to be in the main game, not tacked on at the end. The main critical hit table is deadly. Overly so. Like 1st Edition D&D 'Tomb of Horrors' deadly. The main critical hit table has caused games to flip over on me on a number of times. Both for the better and for the worse.

On the other hand is the optional critical hit table. I personally find it much more useful. Like above, I have two reasons for it, (parity HAHA!). The first is the crunch is much less likely to crush you. The optional critical hit table is a bit more forgiving. I find this important since there are so few models in Mordheim, each one is as important as a rook or a bishop in chess. You can't afford things to get taken off the table from what basically equates to really good luck. While luck will always have a part to play in any game where the main mechanic is dice based, the main critical hit table really really over emphasizes it. Too many games have swung drasitically from one way to the other because of a couple of rolls on the critical hit tables. The other thing that I really like from the optional critical hit table is that the optional rules are more favorful. There's slight changes to the rules depending on the type of weapon that you are using. I especially like one of the spear rolls, where you skewer someone and can potentially drive them off a ledge or something. That's the kind of thing I want to see in a critical hit table, interesting things that don't necessarily change the whole game, but make the particular combat that they are happening in more memorable. Seriously, no one remembers doing extra wounds with no armor save and bonus to the damage result table. Everyone remembers when a goblin pushes some dude off a bridge down three stories.

That's the thing, Mordheim is a wargame, but it has an element of style harkening towards a more RPG center. I can go on about that for days, but I'm not going to. The thing is that Mordheim more then most wargames is a shared story experience. When you can, why would you choose boring mechanics that are potent over mechanics that make the play experience so much richer. If you've been playing, and you haven't been using the optional critical hit charts in the back of the book, stop right now. Go play a game with them, you'll find yourself immensely pleased. Especially if you use a variety of weapons when playing.

That's about all I got in the tank for tonight. I'll see you fools next week!

Monday Night Mordheim; A Return to Normalcy

We're pleased to return you to your regularly scheduled blog!

Well, its been awhile, and I'm a bit rusty here. After much craziness and other things, now things have gotten back on track. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks. Been busy at work, school started back up, and tonight was the first Cub Scout meeting. 

See, there's the thing of it. All summer long I was late for work, I missed blog posts, and generally screwed around. I was missing the structure in my life that comes from my being Daddy. Kids didn't have to get ready in the morning, and they didn't have anything to do after I got home from work. For them it was heaven, nothing but X-box, Doctor Who, and going to the water park. For me, it was hell. I don't do well when there's no plan. I like having my days planned, my weeks mapped out, and my months booked months in advance. 

That's me, but to be honest, its one of the reasons that I do so well in maintaining games. I get into grooves. I shuck and jive. I think that scheduling is one of the most important thing for proper hobbying. Hobby-ing? Hobbieing? Hobbing? Whatever. I do what hobby when I can. Granted, lately that's not much. Got a bunch of other things going on. However, I now have that mind space available to me. It's important to me to keep that bit separate. 

The thing is people complain about not having time to hobby. Yes, we would all love an extra day of the week devoted to nothing but hobby. No school, no work, no social obligations, no anything but painting, terrain buildings, and gaming. That's not possible for most of us. Most of have those other things going on. 

So its important to grab hobby time any time you can. I know that a couple of my PCs in my Friday Night Skype D&D game are painting while we game. I would totally do that, if I weren't the DM and busier then a one legged tyranid in a jumping contest. I can grab a few hours to blog about the game I love on Monday Nights. I don't have anything else cluttering up the schedule. That's one of the reasons that I love Mordheim so much, it doesn't take much to hobby up. 

You can speed an hour or so knocking up stuff to play, and then like an hour and a half to play a single game. If you can arrange that about once a week or so, you will get more hobby done, and more time to play. It doesn't take the huge amount of time that WHFB or 40K does. Just a bit. Then if you get bored of what you are doing, you can easily switch. 

So it seems in my first week back, I wrote a wall of text about nothing in particular, but like I said, I'm getting back in the swing of things. Soon I'll be doing stuff more directly related to Mordheim, but I gotta get back in the groove. So I'll leave it at that, until next week!

Metagaming the Metagame.

As is well documented across the blog, I have a tendency to metagame. I like the metagame when it comes to RPGs. It's pitting the player against the DM, in a battle of wits. There's nothing quite like it. I've mentioned that if a DM gives me something that I'm going to use it, and well, I've taken that around the other side.

 

I love a feint within a feint, inside a trick. A few weeks ago, I told my current PCs in my Skype game that my friend Megan was designing a bad guy for the sandbox game of D&D we were running. That way they would run into it whenever they wandered into the wrong area. Those who know her are rather wondering what she's stated up.

 

However, Po started sending her emails just to be an annoyance today. So I thought that a bit of turnabout is fair play. I quicked up some stats for a 10th level thrikreen psion vampire. Then I 'accidentally' hit reply all to the wrong email thread. The email was something along the lines of; 'I fixed the formatting, please send me the psionic powers please, I need it for next week'.

 

So right now, I'm waiting to see if they take the bait and start stocking up on holy symbols, holy water, garlic, and other anti-vampire things. So during the middle of the game tonight, I'm going to post this blog post. So then they'll know kinda what's really going on. If they bother to check my blog. Evil? Maybe. Did I tell them that there was game info on the blog that they should use? Definitely. Will Megan and I laugh if they go in to face her baddy armed for vampires and encounter something else entirely, yes, yes we will.

 

A feint within a feint, within a dirty trick, and a tell that they have to pick up on. I'm not a nice DM, but I TOLD them what was going on.

Monday Night Mordheim- Scheduling

This week and next week I'll not have a real post. This week, because it is the final week of the really busy at work. Next week because it will be labor day. Then I should be able to return to regular postings.

RPG Thoughts- Game Building 2

This is the second in my series about creating a modern campaign. It started as a series of emails to Eldest Child, who has started running an Alternity Game with his buds (Check out his blog here). 

Since it was written as emails, there are random starts and stops and with how busy I've been elsewhere, it is a bit of a keep you interested thing. However, I like to think the information is still good.

Building a Game 2: Campaign Arc

A good campaign is like a good tv show. Allow me to elaborate on that for a moment. TV shows that last a long time come in two varieties; serial and episodic. A serial television show is where there is an ongoing continuity, and if you miss an episode you miss major changes that happen. Episodic television is the opposite of that though, every episode follows the same format, but nothing really changes episode to episode, so it doesn't matter if you miss an episode since major changes only happen at the season level.

A great campaign works along the same lines as both. Typically, you have each adventure or session that have nothing to do with each other, but every couple sessions you have one that ties into the overall story arc of the campaign. This way you can provide variety and different types of challenges to your PCs each session, but there is a continuity that you can follow and will eventually drive the campaign.

The campaign story arc is a hard thing to define. You almost have to sit down at the beginning and decide how it is going to work out. That's what separates veteran DMs from novices. A veteran DM can roll with what his PCs do to create a good story line out of thin air, whereas a novice has to have it all prepared before hand. I'm not going to talk about creating a campaign story arc on the fly, since that is not something that is helpful to people who already know how to do it. This is a series for beginners, any way.

Now, the first thing to keep in mind is the length of a campaign. We would all love it if our campaigns lasted forever, but in truth that's a lofty goal. Campaigns fall apart for a number of reasons; real world commitments, game burn out, and even falling out amongst players. So it is best if you plan a campaign to last a certain number of sessions. If you plan forward, you decide how much you need to do for your campaign arc.

This is where things get tricky. You have to decide how many sessions that your campaign will last. This is probably the hardest thing that a new DM can do, and to be honest its one that even veterans have trouble with. I've had a lot of campaigns end out from under me for no apparent reason, and you will too. It happens. That's why pre-planning can be infuriating. However, you have to be realistic with yourself. If you are planning to play 'whenever we can all get together', you are better off with a very short campaign maybe four sessions, if that. On the flip side, those of us blessed with nothing but time can take a completely different scale and plan for hundreds of sessions. Now, most people I know play in a regularly scheduled manner. Use that schedule as a basis for what you are planning.

Now, most games I've ever played have lasted a year, (possibly two) typically playing once a week. However, a year long plan is a good benchmark no matter what game you are playing. Things will stay relatively stable across the course of a single year. Others disagree and think that a six month ideal is better, and in a way it is, since you can have a bit more flexibility should real world issues come up. The end of the day, your schedule and how long you are willing to run it is what will decide the number of sessions.

If you are playing a weekly game, a campaign will typically last 52 sessions. Bi-weekly games will last typically last 26 sessions. Poor monthly games will last a scant 12 sessions. However, knowing how many sessions a game will last will allow you to make a better plan.

Going back to the television analogy, you want to build your campaign like a TV season. Let the first season be short. Very short, almost like a mini-campaign, that way if your PCs decide they don't like the game, you will get a nice little self-contained game that you can look back at fondly that you can end easily.

The first season should be about four sessions. The first session where everyone learns the rules and creates characters doesn't count. That's like getting the pilot picked up. Season one should be about the variety of things that can be done in the system. Go out and have fun with it. The first three sessions of the season can be about anything (or nothing at all), however the fourth episode should be your first story arc episode. That gives you everything being neatly cleaned up at the end, but a nicely dangling piece of bait should the PCs want to continue.

That's the good thing. If they PCs decide that they want to continue, then go ahead and 'pick up the back 9'. Expand the campaign to a further 9 sessions. Roughly 25% of all sessions should be campaign story arc. They should not be 1,2,3, arc. Mix it up, throw them around, make your PCs guess what is going on. The final session of the first season should be where the PCs finally discover what the 'Big Bad' is. That's when things really start to take off.

Plan out the rest of the seasons, even before you get to the end of the first season. Since you already know how long your campaign is supposed to last, you can build it up differently. A full year of weekly play will allow for 4 total seasons (that includes the four plus nine first season). A biweekly game will get two, but the poor monthly will barely get one.

This allows you to plan out exactly how you will dole out the story arc. Now, the good part of this type of set up, where you are leaking information about the overall story arc is that you don't have to have each story arc session actually directly do with the story arc. That seems like an oxymoron, but keep with me here. The thing is that it can have to do with the story arc in a very ancillary way. For instance, if the session has to do with a genetically altered animal, it could be that the big bad of the story arc is actually the person/group who paid for the project, even if they had nothing directly to do with it. Or one of the scientists works for the big bad, or something like that.

It has gotten too busy to continue...more later.

RPG Thoughts: Building a Modern RPG 1

This is the first in a series of Emails that I sent to my Eldest Child about how to run a modern RPG setting. While the information in here is more specific for modern games, it may be useful for other games as well.

How to build an RPG game for fun and a lack of profit.

The creation of an RPG is not that hard. Running games is easy, though DMs tend to make it look much harder then it actually is. With pages and pages of stuff written down, maps everywhere, and checking the balance of items, it seems like a lot of work. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In truth, running a RPG is a bit like a research project from school. It's a bit of thinking, a bit of writing, and a whole lot of reading what other people did and then stealing it.

Since you expressed interest in a conspiracy theory type game, or paranormal investigation (if you prefer), I will start my thoughts there. These are actually much easier to run then other types of games. Actually any modern setting is particularly easy. You don't have to do any conversions, you don't have to worry about creating strange names, and you don't have to worry about your PCs not understanding the local laws.

What makes it so easy to run a modern game is the shear abundance of material available on the internet, compared to the bad old days. Wikipedia is your friend. You can find a lot about anything there. With wikipedia and a rule book for a modern setting, you can run tons of stuff. It makes it so easy to note things down, to get a few ideas, and start right off.

Here's a brief outline of how to do it;

1. Choose a major city, US or foreign. It really doesn't matter which one. I strongly suggest choosing a city that you and your players have never been to, that way you aren't going to get 'Hey! That's not right, broad street never connects with 2nd ave!' which while lessens the verisimilitude of the place, it absolutely kills game flow. Look that  city up on wikipedia. Looking over the basics of a city will give you a great overview of that city. You know the basic neighborhoods, the layout, and some major land marks.  Especially pay attention to libraries, museums, and monuments- as well as large buildings (like sky scrappers).

2. Review the history of the city specifically. Where there any major disasters? How about battles? Scandals are always fun as well. This stuff is a great base for creating adventures. Haunted battlefields, psychic depressions in areas of great suffering, and even strange groups pulling the strings behind the scenes for scandals. This is also why it is a good idea to pick a city that you nor your PCs are emotionally attached to. If you pick your hometown there's always a chance that your PCs will go 'My great-great-grandmother died in the Great Fire of '27, that's not right that you made it a plot by the Evil Organization'.

3. Do a quick search on the internet for things like '[City Name] Haunted sites', or '[City Name] UFO sightings'. That sort of thing. That will give you a great start for figuring out some more adventures.

4. Extra leg work. This is entirely optional, but it can be fun and entertaining. Look at some places in the city with google street view and maybe do some searches on youtube for things in the city. Another fun thing is to find the local news stations and watch some local news, get a real feel for the real things that are happening there. If during a session, your PCs have to take a detour because of construction that is happening.

So this can all be done in as little as a half hour or so. If you want a more mobile campaign, you can keep doing this over and over again with a different city each time.

Geez, guys, you can't tell me when the formatting is all messed up? Come ON!