Even though most of my current players are also alumni and could keep on playing, I have maintained the habit. Running a different game for a while is a bit like eating a sorbet between courses; it cleanses my mental palate and satisfies my urge for novelty, allowing me to return to my regular games with gusto once they resume after the break.

This Easter I have decided to run a short Solar Exalted game comprised of four sessions that, I hope, will carry a single story.

I’m no stranger to Exalted. In fact I ran it continously from its publication in 2001 to the end of my last chronicle in 2010, and I’ve been playing regularly in a chronicle since then. I became a bit burned out on Exalted and I have no interest in running a long-term game of it right now. However White Wolf have recently been making a concerted effort to iron out the plethora of kinks that were introduced as a result of “supplement creep” and return the game to its roots as a heroic action fantasy game where the emphasis in combat is on fun rather than optimal character builds.

They have done this by releasing comprehensive “errata” which could be described more accurately as a version revision to Exalted 2.5.

I want to persuade the GM of my regular game to adopt the “errata” in totality, giving us a single set of rules once more rather than a mess of some corrected rules and some left as per the main rulebook. I thought the best way to do this would be to run a short game using all of them so that he could see how Exalted 2.5 compares with Exalted 2.

My Exalted games are, it turns out, fairly popular. I went from musing about what game to run over the Easter break to having eight confirmed players for a Solars game in just a few hours. I had to come up with a general idea for the game at the same time so that my players would know what type of characters to create. The premise I pitched was that the game would be set in the North (an area of Creation I haven’t used heavily since my first chronicle in 2001). Each of the characters would be drawn from their homes into the icy wilderness by vivid dreams sent by the Unconquered Sun.

There’s more to it than that of course, but I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling the game for any of my players who happen to be reading.

Part One – The First Session

Because I have so many players I didn’t want to simply throw them all together as if they’d known each other for a while and expect them to roleplay. In my experience players don’t cope well with a cold start like that; they need a while to warm up and inhabit their character before they’re able to deal with large social scenes.

With this in mind I began with one player at a time, establishing how they were travelling and a bit about their motives and intentions. As they are all converging on the same destination from roughly the same origin (e.g. travelling from inhabited lands to the south into the frozen northern wastes) I had each player randomly bump into one of the other players.

This went quite well in most cases, with a good bit of humour and roleplaying as each person got into character. The most memorable encounter for me was between the character with a horse but no idea of how to look after him, and the character whose mount was a large, metallic, rock and flesh-eating centipede thing called a Cthrita. I’d been a little uncertain about letting him have that thing as a mount during character creation but I decided that I had no compelling reason not to in the end. During this encounter that decision really paid off. The interaction between the two characters and the out of character reactions of the other players when they realised what the mount was were highly enjoyable.

The least successful encounter was between the Yeddim-riding warrior nomad and the Night-caste youth who met him. She was determined that her introduction would be to the whole group at a time of her choosing and instead of showing herself to the Yeddim rider she chose to remain invisibly perched on his howdah. This was fine narratively but it meant that the nomad’s player didn’t get to do much when I went to him as I cut between the pairs of Exalts to keep everyone active.

After forming pairs in this way I slowly aggregated the pairs into a large group by use of a convenient supernatural ice storm and cavern in which to shelter from the storm. We had quite a lot of fun as the pairs arrived and discovered their commonality of purpose with the others, and the exotic mounts chosen by some of the players provided some entertaining mental images.

The Night caste finally revealed herself and the whole group got to talk and banter a bit as the storm played out beyond the safety of the cavern.

When they journeyed forth the next morning it was not as an official group, but their common destination meant that they ended up travelling together for all practical purposes.

I rounded off the session with an obstacle and some combat. Initially I had planned for the obstacle to be a mile-wide chasm of apparently bottomless depth which would have to be crossed in some kind of imaginitive way. When we actually got there I had a better understanding of the group and each character’s capabilities and I realised that this would be a very difficult obstacle to surmount. To keep things flowing (we were running out of time) I put a large wind-blown rope bridge over the chasm instead.

On attempting to cross the chasm I launched the combat; a large number of relatively weak demon-bat things that emerged from the black depths of the crevasse to attack the players. This was designed to be a relatively quick and straightforward fight so I used relatively weak stats for each bat and put them in groups of six. I then used Exalted’s Mass Combat system (in a very simplified form) to increase the power level of each group to represent that there was more than one bat in each.

This brief combat was enough to give players a slight feel for the effect of the Exalted 2.5 rules in combat, specifically the effect of allowing combos of charms to be used freely without needing to pre-buy them. To me it seemed that players had more control over their tactical options and felt a lot less limited. For example they could use powerful attack charms like Peony Blossom Attack without having to worry about leaving themselves undefended. This had the effect of making the fight more dynamic in my opinion, though of course it’s early days yet.

The fight slightly outlasted its welcome because one player was more keen on making his character appear weak during the fight so that others would underestimate him than on finishing his attackers. We got right to the end of the session and he was still mopping up the last bat, causing a small amount of frustration for the players who wanted to pack up ready to go.

So that was the end of the first session. The players had not yet finished crossing the bridge, giving me a useful place from which to pick things up next time.

The players’ reactions on leaving seemed generally positive, so I believe the game is going well so far. Hopefully next week we’ll really be able to get our teeth into the plot and I’ll have more to report on the experience of playing with all of the Exalted 2.5 errata.

Part Two – The Second Session

So on to the second session. At the beginning of the night we were on schedule as far as my expectations for the plot. I didn’t have too much planned for the evening except that they would arrive at their destination and receive the invitation to adventure. Spirits were generally high with a lot of banter and conversation before the game began, though one player had been on a night shift the night before and was exhausted.

I began by introducing the two players who hadn’t been able to make it to the first session. As with the first session I did this by having them encounter each other on the way as they investigated signs of recent activity in the cavern where the rest of the party had sheltered from the storm. They found common purpose and went on together, which made my life easier.

The rest of the group was camping at the chasm, planning to cross over it the next morning when, perhaps, the bat-demon-things would not attack. After establishing who had the watch I described how a mammoth, his rider and a group of people and oxen emerged from the early morning mists to meet them at the chasm.

Things took a bit of a downturn here because the roleplaying didn’t flow very naturally between the arriving players and the ones who had been camping at the chasm. The player who’d been on watch did her best to encourage introductions and conversation but things here were somewhat stilted and I quickly moved on to their chasm-crossing efforts.

One of the players tittered when I described the chasm as a ‘gash’ in the land, so I somewhat stupidly made a few similar descriptions over the next few minutes; this probably wasn’t conducive to player immersion and the mood I wanted. “An axe-wound, if you will, in the landscape,” for example.

The next scene was quite amusing. Initially planning to call for Athletics rolls to safely navigate the bridge, one of the players negated the risk of ice on the planks by describing how he took salt from his supplies and scattered it across the slippery surface. Instead it became more of a challenge for players to encourage their mounts on to the wide yet unstable bridge.

I think I managed to introduce a fairly decent sense of tension as the heavier mounts traversed the chasm. A moment of drama was provided in counterpoint to this by a player botching his Ride roll and being dragged on his backside halfway along the bridge. Midway across another player realised he’d only taken two allies as backgrounds but had described three in his retinue; I fixed that by having the extraneous ally grabbed by a dark tentacle from the abyss and pulled to his doom.

Overall I was quite pleased with this scene.

We moved on, and I described how the group passed into an area of morraines and valleys left by glaciation. Soon after a Frozen Fog descended, restricting vision and causing them to need to wrap up warm due to its supernatural chill. I stumbled a bit here when I mentioned that some of those who enter the frozen fog exit somewhere completely different. I had meant that they were magically transported across large distances but one of the players took it as obvious and literal: “Ooh, who’d have thought! Somewhere different!”

This slightly disrupted the mood for a bit, but things improved during the next scene. I described how they exited the fog to a plain of jagged ice crystals ranging between a few feet and a dozen metres in height. I had to describe this scene at least three times due to various players not paying attention, which was a little annoying. From the fog behind them emerged a Snow Wyrm – a flying, burrowing white-furred serpent with multiple fins and dagger-sharp teeth. Weakened by its sudden disconnection from the Wyld I planned for it to be quite a tough fight, but one with a time limit of 25 ticks. At that point the worm would have collapsed and begun to die, weakened by the static nature of reality outside the Wyld.

The first couple of attacks merely grazed the creature, doing minimal damage. The next two attacks however completely obliterated it, leaving four players having been unable to take part in the combat. The total duration of the fight was five ticks.

While the bat-things had been a quick test fight to get people comfortalble with combat, I’d intended for this to be a bit more of a challenge. I admit that I underestimated the power of basic combat charms allowing successes to be doubled for purposes of calculating damage pools. I don’t regret that the beast was so easy to kill, but with hindsight I should have provided more than one target to ensure that everyone had a chance to take part in the fight.

Having said that, the novice Exalted player who helped to take down the serpent was obviously impressed with the way in which he’d been able to achieve such horrendous damage with use of so little Essence; He had obviously enjoyed the moment and perhaps this was a real taste of the power of an Exalted.

We wrapped up the session as the group drew near to their destination, a manse of ice crystals and light surrounded by a moat or chasm crossed only by bridges made of filmy rainbow light.

I’d expected to get a little further than this and to have them meet who was inside the manse, but this was perhaps an even better place to end the session.

Next week my plot could radically diverge depending on the players’ actions and it will be interesting to see which way things go. I am looking forward to dropping hints to the nature of their situation and what choices the characters will make. The potential combat scenarios I have planned should give the opportunity for everybody to take part, with the potential for some more threatening opponents that can give challenge to the more combat-effective members of the group.

Part Three – The Third and Fourth Sessions

Since I wrote part two of this series I have run the final two sessions of the game. The overall feedback from my players was positive, though I think the game suffered to an extent from the large group size. I ended things in a very open way – a cliffhanger almost – and intimated that I may be willing to run a sequel in the next vacation.

So the group finally got to the shining rainbow manse of my plot giver (for want of a better term), who told them that he had been uplifted by the Unconquered Sun and given the task of welcoming them as a proper Circle of exalts. He went on to tell them that he had been given a task to pass on to them by the Sun.

The group were immediately a bit on the suspicious side, though primarily this was due to the fact that they were put out at the idea that their god would deign to speak to this mortal when he had not spoken to most of them.

Anyway, the task was quite straightforward. A short distance away was a human village that had been attacked by marauding polar bear beast-men. The humans were imprisoned and ready for the slaughter, the bears planning to devour their corpses. Could the circle free them from this terrible fate?

After some discussion the group agreed to go and at least investigate this. On arrival they found that there was indeed a village with a palisade fence and an internal stockade in which a couple of hundred dirty humans were being kept prisoner (or was it a few dozen? Apparently my notes were insufficiently detailed on this and the situation got a mite muddied between sessions three and four).

The village itself was indeed populated with polar-bear beast men. After a bit of investigation the group came up with a plan. The Night caste would sneak in and free the humans using a hole gnawed into the palisade by the Cthrita mount of one of the group. Meanwhile the others would approach the main gate of the village and issue an ultimatum, requiring that they hand over their prisoners.

Narratively I was really pleased with how well this scene went. Almost everyone was involved and the interactions between the circle, the bear-men and the prisoners were highly entertaining.

The plan went without a hitch and the Night caste tied up the guard on the stockade and successfully freed the humans, sending them off to the merchant member of the circle to arm themselves before returning to gain vengeance on the polar-bear men. At the same time the more martial members of the circle intimidated the leader of the bear-men into handing over the prisoners.

The leader had 10 men with him and sent five of these to fetch the prisoners, leaving him with five warriors. After some quiet discussion in a language not spoken by the bear-leader, the circle decided to attack and destroy the bears.

The session ended with combat, then, this time against multiple enemies of a slightly tougher disposition than the bats from earlier.

The very first blow of the session was struck using the Solar Hero Style, in particular a charm called Hammer Fist Punch. Using it to punch the bear leader into the wooden palisade wall, the player inflicted 128 dice (or thereabouts) of bashing damage upon the bear-man. This turned him into a fine red mist and completely destroyed the main gates of the village.

Another bear man was cleaved in twain by a grand grimcleaver in a single blow.

Meanwhile the Night caste discovered that the (newly freed) humans were bandits who had come to try and steal the village from the bear-men and were in fact justly imprisoned. Hearing the slaughter at the village’s gate she ran back to stop the massacre, leaving the humans to their own devices.

The last action of the session was a player attacking another of the bears, only to be blocked by the heroic defence of the returning Night caste.

The Fourth Session

We picked up with the combat next session, having saved the exact combat state with my Conflict Manager (a Java program I wrote for the purpose of managing conflicts – social and physical). I should have made a few notes as well though, or rather made more detailed notes on the actions I listed in my manager, because I was a little hazy on what exactly had happened at the end of the previous session.

Faced with the terrifying Solar exalts the remaining bear-men surrendered and put down their weapons. The circle found it difficult to justify attacking considering this and so the combat fizzled out somewhat.

Meanwhile drama did build on the far side of the camp as the bandits thought they might stand a chance at robbing the merchant of ALL his goods, not just the weapons. He managed to make them believe he could defend himself, however, and not knowing the situation continued to arm them as planned so they could “take back” the village.

When the rest of the circle realised this their greatest general went to confront the marauding bandits and used his War charms to first rout them and then to rally them to his banner, their leader having been blinded in his remaining eye by one of the other warriors in the circle.

Having realised that they were duped by the old man the group considered how to proceed. They spoke with the bear-men’s shaman and found out about a god they worshipped called the White Walker, but most of them considered this likely to be a Lunar exalt. The first plan they considered was stealing the village from the bear-men and making it theirs, with the bears as their servants.

Before doing this however they decided to get revenge on the mysterious old man who had misguided them while claiming to speak for the Unconquered Sun. With three bears and the remaining bandits they returned to the manse and entered to get some answers.

After a brief interrogation they realised that the man was clearly deluded and genuinely believed what he had told them. They deduced that another god must have been claiming to be the unconquered sun to mislead him – but why?

To get the god’s attention they decided to damage the manse, which they presumed was a valuable asset for him. This involved having one of their warriors smite a vulnerable spot in the hearth room with his grand grimcleaver.

The result of this was a little more effective than anticipated, due to the multiplying effects of the geomantic survey and the fact that the weak spot chosen was in the hearth room – this added a multiplier of six to a multiplier of five to the damage, meaning that the strike inflicted something like 136 damage to the manse.

This instantly reduced its rating to 0 and destroyed the manse, causing a dangerous essence vent to flare in the hearth room. The group fled even as the axe-wielding warrior suffered rainbow-hued burns to his face and body (inflicting 15dice of bashing damage).

This scene was a lot of fun too, and a clear example of how sometimes being too good at something can be a bit of a problem…

The old man, cut off from the life-sustaining energies of the manse, collapsed and died. On investigating his corpse the group found the sigil of a god named Rastus, god of Light and Illusion tattooed on his chest (bit of an obvious clue I know, but this was getting near the end of the session)!

The group decided to pray to Rastus to call him to account, sacrificing the bandits (by flinging them into the moat around the manse, which was filled with jagged crystals) to do so. Meanwhile random bursts of essence vented around the manse, killing one or two of the bandits (and leaving behind valuable rainbow-stained bones which were collected by the merchant for sale).

Rastus answered in the form of a glowing illusion in the sky, where he told them that they had fallen entirely into his trap by demonstrating that the Solars are too dangerous to leave alive. He said they had hastened their own end by giving him the evidence he needed to arrange for the Aerial Legion to be sent against them.

Despite further sacrifices he refused to be drawn any further and, being in Heaven, there was little the group could do to stop him. Or was there?

The Zenith felt himself touched by the Unconquered Sun, energy flowing through him and crackling into the air as the Calibration Gate took form before them, opening the way to Yu-Shan.

And I ended the game with them stepping through the gate to take up their issue with Rastus personally.

So there we go. In general I felt that this four-part game was quite satisfying. Nothing I threw against the players was much of a challenge in combat, but more importantly fighting them was a lot of fun.

With the new combo rules and the errata’d charms, I think that only very powerful creatures and Charm users are likely to pose any kind of challenge to Exalted. Running Exalted-level combat however would have taken entire sessions and I didn’t really have the time to do that for this game, especially not in numbers enough for the whole group to be involved in the conflict.

On the whole I feel that the changes to the combat system and the charms in the Errata have improved Exalted quite a bit, allowing players to use more of their charms without leaving themselves undefended and therefore actually letting them enjoy the magic they’ve bought. Social Combat is also made more significant, with attacks being much more expensive to resist.

Exalted 2.5 has more of an epic feel that might make it more difficult to run the game in the long run, but I am impressed so far.

This game has been running since Geist was published in 2009 and features a group of Sin-Eaters in London who have recently bound themselves together into a krewe (s supernaturally bound group that channels energy from the Underworld)  in the face of competition from two larger krewes. Their krewe has no official name as yet but the characters have also founded a company called Twilight Investigations which offers help with troubled spirits and other occult weirdness.

My enthusiasm for Geist took a bit of a dive just before returning from the Easter vacation. A player who’s been gaming with me in the World of Darkness on Mondays for the last 12 years told me on Sunday that he was quitting the game for various reasons. Still, the show must go on and I still had six players to entertain yesterday evening.

The sixth player was introduced in the final session of last term. He’s new to tabletop Geist but regularly played the live-action version  He’s familiar with my GMing –  he plays Az-Tec in the Eclipse Phase game.

At the end of the previous session there were parallel plot threads ongoing. Most of the group was planning to meet with the new character to find out if he is spying for one of the other krewes in the city and possibly to try and recruit him for their krewe. Meanwhile Drs Peace and Clarke were running late due to a recent breakthrough in the group’s current case, an investigation into morbid galleries of human body parts that spring up around London like fungi and which have been dubbed The Gallery of Pain.

So. Professor Drake, the new character, met the others at their Twilight Investigations office. We got a full description of their facilities for the first time in a long while and there was a certain amount of confusion as to exactly what facilities were there. On arrival Drake first took the time to bully 20-something ex-homeless guy Barry into making him a cup of coffee. Although insignificant in the long run we actually played this out using the Social Combat system from the World of Darkness supplement “Danse Macabre”; primarily this is because Barry’s social skills are considerably stronger than his player’s and I felt that the initial meeting would affect the tone of their relationship in the future.

Barry lost at the first roll and grudgingly went to go and make the coffee. He didn’t even spit in it.

The group spent a while talking with the newcomer, with the conversation taking a distinctly threatening tone at times. You see, they were suspicious of his recent attentions and thought he may be a spy working for one of the larger krewes in the city. In fact though he explained he wished to investigate and court their krewe as he felt the odds of being important to the organisation were greater. At last they decided to trust him for now and let him hang around with the group subject to an extensive and invasive investigation of him by the group’s infiltration and surveillance expert, Joe.

As GM I was pleased with the way this scene went because there was a high level of engagement from all of the players and a good sense of energy in the conversation. I barely had to speak during the scene because the players were busy roleplaying amongst themselves and it’s always satisfying when that happens.

Then the other two members of the krewe arrived with some news! They had been investigating a disembodied eye found at the Gallery of Pain. Initial investigations proved that the target was almost certainly still alive so they began using a Ceremony called Distant Vision that would enable them to see the subject at a distance by using a mirror that had once held their reflection. On doing so they found that he and others were strapped to beds in a building reminiscent of a warehouse and that they were being tended to by a girl they recognised as Raven, a member of a small krewe in the city called The Strangers.

The group decided to investigate this themselves rather than involve the mortal authorities. The first part of their plan was to investigate a church that they knew the Strangers had been to before, hoping that a mirrored surface inside the church might have reflected them, allowing the krewe to track them.

I enjoyed the scene at the church immensely. The group met up with Rory there, a fourteen-year-old boy with sensitivity to ghostly visions whom the group had met at least twice before. Eager to investigate the occult under the mentorship of Dr Clarke, Rory was proud to show the doctor his “Kirlian Goggles” – a device supposed to be able to let the psychically insensitive view the ephemeral spirits of the departed.

On investigating the church they found that the mirror there did indeed contain images of at least three of the Strangers. One of them was in the process of inflicting pain and scarification on a naked man in a dark room lit only by a lava lamp. Raven was in a quiet bar, the decor and clientele indicating that it was a themed place of some kind. Online research after the fact determined that the place was for like-minded persons with an interest in the BDSM scene to come together.

 They also saw a third member of the krewe sitting with Raven. The fourth, a heavily scarred teenager named Knives, was caught descending into a basement bar somewhere in Soho that they suspected to be the same bar the other members of the Strangers were within.

Thus began the last scene of the night as the players began to investigate the fetish bar, named Jackx. A wall in the side alley of Jackx was marked with the sigil of the Strangers, indicating they had claimed it as their own territory.

Energy levels were beginning to flag at this point and I must admit that I became distracted a few times during this scene. The player who left was talking to me on IRC to ask how the game was going in his absence and a couple of other things vied for my attention. The group set up surveillance positions and then sent Joe in to try and get the bar and the flats above it evacuated, leading to a detailed scene for Joe’s player where the rest really couldn’t do very much.

To cut a long story short the infiltrator set a fire in one of the apartments and triggered a false alarm in the apartment above, causing a building-wide alarm to be generated. The last thing that happened was that one of the Strangers activated Industrial Boneyard (an area-effect power allowing manipulation of mechanical devices within the area) to view what was going on and shut off the electricity to stop the fire from spreading.

Next week then we begin on a high note with the krewe’s inevitable confrontation with The Strangers.

On the whole I was pleased with the session though the last forty-five minutes to an hour did drag compared to the rest of the game. With hindsight it might have been better to abstract the infiltrator’s process to a single rolled action rather than requiring exhaustive detail about how he was achieving his goals.

I could alternatively have improved this scene by having the player characters temporarily take on the role of people living in the flats above Jackx whom Joe avoided in the setting up of his scheme.

In my opinion the best scenes were the ones rich in character interaction. Whether the group was talking amongst itself or speaking with NPCs the highest level of engagement occurred in these moments.

I should first confess that I spent no time at all between the last session and this one plotting out what was going to happen on Atlantica. I had a vague idea of what the habitat was like and who some of the important NPCs were, but when the session began I didn’t even have a concrete plan for what Brandt would do on his arrival to the habitat.

People were initially confused about how the habitat worked so I spent a few minutes drawing a diagram to demonstrate the overall structure of Atlantica. I think this was useful in giving a starting point for the players’ imaginations, as was the illustration of Atlantica in Panopticon Volume 1.

The first part of the session was absorbed with speaking with Grey Man to organise the egocast to Atlantica and resleeving on arrival. Something I quite enjoyed was the way that the habitat’s specific environment made some morphs quite rare or impossible to obtain (e.g. slitheroids, ghost morphs) and others trivial (neo-dolphins, neo-porpoises). Two of the group elected to obtain Takko morphs (robotic octopodes), one a neo-orca, one a flexbot (a modular re-shapeable robotic morph) and one a Menton (a humanoid morph with enlarged cranial capacity).

Of course the group also wanted specific enhancements such as armour, cyberclaws and so forth; the most unusual request was a pair of Great White smart sharks. While their contact could obtain a lot of what they needed I had him tell the group that they would need to source the more offensive items on their lists from the ‘black market’; otherwise it would be hard to sell their cover as tourists from Locus.

We then dealt with the resleeving itself. This was quite a lengthy process as I wanted to evoke a feel for each player of the morph he would be wearing for the mission. In some cases they were wearing morphs that were completely novel to the characters. In addition to this there are three rolls that must be made every time someone resleeves and a certain amount of book-keeping in regard to stress taken from Alienation and Lack. In total it must have taken about an hour just to get everyone sleeved and operational on the new habitat.

The highlight of this scene for me was the resleeving of the Sylph socialite into a neo-orca body. The first Integration test resulted in a critical failure so I had the resleeving technician offer to start again. On the second attempt the failure was less severe but the character, Harry, would be afflicted with a -10 modifier to all physical actions for the next three days as a result of the poor roll.

I also enjoyed playing whalesong and describing how these sounds could be heard echoing and reverberating around the entire habitat. Blondie, who has an aversion to uplift cetaceans, used AR overlays to filter the noise out of his sensorium of course.

While Jason, the Menton and a specialist in VR and AR simulation and surveillance, began to mingle with other scientists in the arcologies on the ‘floor’ of the habitat (and similtaneously started a comprehensive surveillance operation) the rest of the group proceeded to meet with Bandit one at a time.

I introduced a small gang of ‘criminal’ dolphins on guard outside Bandit’s emporium, one of which introduced itself as Jimmy The Squid. Wholeheartedly embracing the Chicago gangster archetype I proceeded to voice him as if he were a reject from a Jimmy Cagney movie. After I described him as having a scar over his eye and sucking on some kind of plastic tube (like a cigarette) one of my players was inspired to draw this:

I’m sort of in two minds about this. On the one hand my players obviously enjoyed the characterisation and concept of Jimmy the Squid but on the other he was a pretty funny character.

On reading other people’s Actual Plays and game logs I do sometimes wonder if I introduce too much humour into my game. Then again, I do think that the humour serves as a pleasing contrast to the darker elements that feature so prominently in Eclipse Phase. Ultimately my players’ response is the key factor and it was obvious that they had a good time with Jimmy the Squid.

Bandit on the other hand was a pretty serious character. I enjoyed playing out the scene where he met the player sleeved in a Neo-Orca, who went to Bandit to obtain his great white smart sharks. Bandit disapproved of a clumsy human with no Guanxi coming to him in an Orca sleeve (especially due to the history of the sleeve in question, though that’s something the players aren’t aware of yet…) and proceeded to be coldly disrespectful towards Harry as a result. This was compounded by the fact that Harry tried to impress him by performing some underwater athletics and blundered badly, damaging the walls of the cavern. As part of his revenge, Bandit stealthily placed a tracking device on Harry in the shape of a water louse.

I then got to use metagaming to build tension! Blaine (The Guy) met up with Jimmy the Squid to find out where he could get fitted with cyberclaws. During this conversation Jimmy gloated about some orca who’d be “In for a big surprise, see?” when he got the great white smart sharks he requested.

Harry’s player actually head-desked, a moment of great joy for me.

Anyway, a few hours later Harry took possession of his smart sharks and everything seems to be fine… for now. I love building up the tension for the player while his character is completely oblivious!

Meanwhile Az-Tec, the group’s hacker, also met with Bandit to acquire a Skulker morph and to try to find out more about the arrival of Damon Brandt. Az-Tec is extremely well known on the Guanxi network and Bandit treated him with due respect. Part of this involved lending him a dolphin named Flossie to show him around.

Az-Tec, of course, hacked into Flossie’s mesh inserts to find out what she knew of Damon Brandt, and on the spur of the moment I decided that this would be a good time to make her a potential ally for the group. So I explained how she had multiple mesh IDs ready to go on her inserts and how her reputation on those other IDs indicated that she tends to be a part of the unofficial ‘police force’ looking out for the habitat’s best interests.

She knew something about Brandt but didn’t have his current whereabouts or the sleeve he wore out of Bandit’s place. Az-Tec asked her a few leading questions and she decided to put him in touch with someone who might be able to help him. On cross-referencing the mesh ID she gave him, Az-Tec found that she’d just put him in contact with her own alternative identity.

So the session ended with the group having made a few contacts and found a few clues, with the brunt of the investigatory work to begin in the next session.

In general the session seemed to have gone over pretty well with the players, who I hoped enjoyed the change of scenery that Atlantica had to offer.

This was the first session back after the Easter hiatus. Being a returning game there was a certain degree of distraction as people got back into the game and caught up with each other and so forth, but it was to an acceptable degree and did not detract from the session in my opinion.

We picked up immediately where we left off, with the torus habitat of Victoriana spinning eccentrically due to rupture of its exterior water tanks, the stress of this causing the entire habitat to burst open like a blown tyre and start flinging its contents into space. Five thousand bioconservative flats who had chosen to live in primitive Victorianesque living conditions were permanently killed as a result of the cell’s efforts to purge the Dagon exsurgent virus from the habitat’s water tanks by slicing into the infected region with their fast courier’s antimatter drive exhaust.

First we dealt with the stress of seeing so many dead and knowing that the cell was responsible. This was quite interesting due to The Guy being multiply sleeved; in his own (badly damaged) custom Synth and also in two generic Synths taken from the habitat’s security office. The ego in the primary Synth was sufficiently stressed that he fell into a catatonic stupor, one was barely affected and the other was completely fine.

As all three egos were of equally recent vintage the two non-catatonic egos decided that one of them should replace the alpha. The player knew that one of the egos had 4 points of stress and the other was fine, but as I pointed out to him without being a psychotherapist it would be difficult to compare their stress levels. He made a Psychosurgery test against his skill of 10 and failed to determine which was the least stressed ego, so I assigned at random which ego was copied into the primary morph. As luck would have it the slightly stressed ego ended up being copied.

The cell briefly debated whether or not to send a ship back from their own small habitat (which they have dubbed the Death Asteroid) to salvage the remains of Victoriana, but ultimately decided that they didn’t wish to be associated with the destruction and carnage. They were also aware that the Exsurgent-infected (but human-appearing) security commander of the habitat had fled by egocast to Locus just before they destroyed the habitat, applying a certain amount of time pressure to their activities.

So they took their courier back to Locus, leaving a direct path between the destroyed habitat, their ship and Locus that would make it fairly easy for people to put two and two together to determine who was responsible for the destruction. To ameliorate this three of the cell decided to order their refitted cargo ship The Cobra Of Business (once the Runcible Spoon) to rendezvous with them en-route so they could transfer to the other ship and avoid being associated with events at Victoriana. The Guy, as the keeper and pilot of the group’s courier, stayed aboard and returned to Locus while the Cobra diverted to the Death Asteroid.

For the next hour or so people took the opportunity of a few days’ downtime (time taken to find the whereabouts of the egocasted Exsurgent) to repair their morphs, acquire new ones and deal with the aftermath of the assault on Victoriana. The Guy was questioned by the community as to his involvement in the habitat’s destruction and at first withheld a reply. This led to him taking a significant hit to his circle-a reputation as the habitat’s people started to consider if he might be a threat as the captain of a fast courier.

Realising that silence could be costly he finally responded to say that while he was the courier’s owner it was not his responsibility what people do with the ship while it is leased to them; one could call this the ‘following orders’ defence. This spawned quite a debate on the habitat’s mesh, with some defending his actions and attitudes and others defaming him as lacking in social responsibility. This caused a further moderate blow to his @-rep but increased his standing with Guanxi by a similar amount, as they quite like pilots and other assets who do as they are told without asking awkward questions.

I enjoyed this part of the session because it was good to see rep in action as more than an abstract concept. Most of the group waded into the mesh discussion as well, giving them an involvement in what was going on.

Next a majority of the group met with the group’s Server, Mr Poe, to discuss the events on Victoriana. He did not have much to say except to stress that though the loss of life was regrettable he appreciated that the hard thing needs to be done sometimes to safeguard humanity+. Their tough actions on Victoriana thus led to an increase in rep with The Eye. He asked them to hunt down the escaped Exsurgent as a matter of urgency and requested a fresh backup from each of them for psychiatric evaluation and for emergency re-sleeving purposes.

Some of the group acquiesced to his demand but others went to fairly extreme lengths to avoid handing over a copy of their ego. Notably Blondie took the ego from a fork of himself that has been overseeing the Death Asteroid for over  a year and then spliced in the last six months of memories from his primary alpha ego. The Guy refused altogether and reached a compromise position where he would receive an on-site psych-eval.

Meanwhile Az-Tec was hunting down the exsurgent, his search leading him to one of the many darkcasting facilities on Locus, this one operated by a remnant of the Russian Mafia. He infiltrated the module easily and found a single operative slumped at his desk stimming out on a macro porn VR called Ms Paris Does Paris (featuring a giantess pleasuring herself with the Eiffel Tower and having cars rev their tyres against her nipples).

Az-Tec reasonably easily hacked the porn freak’s mesh inserts and obtained access to the darkcast computer, allowing him to track back the exsurgent’s destination. He had sent himself to a dark-cast run by a criminal whale named Bandit on the aquatic habitat of Atlantica.

Az-Tec paused to thermite the cheap casemorph that had been used by the exsurgent on Locus and then left to brief the rest of the group.

Mister Poe authorised an urgent mission to Atlantica and put them in touch with a neo-dolphin codenamed Grey Man. Grey Man is a Sentinel who is responsible for passive intelligence gathering operations on the habitat but he can provide information and organise the hire of temporary sleeves to allow the group to egocast aboard to investigate the activities of the exsurgent. Atlantica is a site of great biological importance and the exsurgent must be stopped before he brings the Dagon virus to the last remnant of Earth’s oceans.

I was generally satisfied with the session as a bridge between the previous mission and the next and felt that we did some good work as a group in bringing to life some of the realities of living in a transhuman future. Energy levels were high throughout despite some players being quite tired and there was a good level of interplay between both players and characters.

I was in two minds about giving details on the porn VR being viewed by the Russian darkcaster. On the one hand the weird variety of VR available is always worth highlighting in the game; on the other perhaps this was a little too prurient to have been worth giving any attention to? I only described it in two or three sentences but perhaps one would have been enough.

I’m looking forward to next week and the group’s efforts in preventing Atlantica from falling to the Dagon virus.

Some of the players in my LARP have busy schedules, and are unable to make it to my game,  so I send them little stories and snapshots of what their characters were upto during the game instead.  

Better than Life 1

The unyielding rain beats down around you at an odd pace like a slow Danse Macabre. With the thin canopy overhead providing little shelter you’re a sitting duck, and you know it.  Every step forward your feet sink a little farther into the mud, squelching loudly and ungracefully up the sides of your boots.

“He has to know I’m here.” The thought flies through your mind as you scan the trees looking for signs of movement; tracking, scanning and turning.

You give the signal by raising your left hand firmly into the air.

“Now we wait. I can survive this; just pay attention.”

Preparing for his strike you raise your shield. Custom forged steel, suitably weighted to give you balance; not that it will help you on such abysmal ground.

“Come on, Come on…” Your impatiences grows as your unseen attacker lies waiting for the most opportune moment to strike.

Suddenly the Coward makes his move. You feel it before you see it, a burning, searing sensation at the back of your neck.

From the corner of you eye you see a light as bright as the sun heading straight for you. Your body reacts faster than your mind can process what’s happening as you dive out of the way, arms first into the mud. Time seems to slow down and a roaring ball of fire sprints past your body as you collapse to the ground.

The ungraceful landing sprays mud into the air as a nearby tree explodes, deafening you momentarily.

“Get up, Get up!”

From the ground you see lightning arcing from your opponent’s fingertips towards the canopy as a volley of arrows evaporate inside the energy blast. Hidden partially behind that tree, you think you can surprise him before he can react. Pushing hard against the ground you bolt towards him, moving with power and determination, creating a tidal wave of mud at your bow. The Anger rising inside of you as you close the distance.

His eyes glance towards you, as he bites his finger and draws a circle in the air.

“Not this time.”

His escape portal opens: A shimmering blue disk of light, casts its eerie glow across the battlefield.

The Anger inside of you flows from your body into your sword, from your mud soaked boots to your bloodthirsty heart; you strike at his cover.

The Sword halts as it strikes the tree, a tree that was standing before the cities were built and the world was tamed by man. It cracks under the blow.

Dryads would weep tears for a thousand years as the trunk  shatters into large chucks at the impact before being blown to pieces, scattering debris in all directions.

The next thing you recall, aside from a raging headache from being pounded in the head by the weight of a tree, is having a handful of small red berries being crushed into your mouth.

“Did we get him?” you ask, dazed, as the healing herbs begin to take effect.

“Yes,” comes the reply “But he didn’t drop the amulet.”

“We’ll have to do the instance again.”

Somehow you don’t feel to disheartened, at least you have an awesome story to tell.

Sally slams the computer shut with a click, tears in her eyes. Why would he not come and see her? He was her friend wasn’t he? She thought they got on well before. She frowns, pursing her lips, her hands balled into fists on the laptop for a moment before moving it. She puts her face in her hands. She likes him. Okay not as much as Arty, but he is her friend.  “I haven’t slept yet,” he had said. A tear glistens on her cheek. The tawny owl that has been sitting on the back of the sofa, reading the messages with her, flaps down to sit on the arm next to her.

“He will be okay.” It says, its voice soft and whispery, concerned. She looks at it, tears still migrating downwards. “He is strong; you said he was when he taught you.” Sally shakes her head and the owl moves again, sitting on her lap now; it snuggles up against her. She strokes its soft brown feathers absently, lost in thought. He had been so kind to her, helping her learn and dancing with her.

“But if he’s not sleeping…” She argues with the owl, which swivels its head to look up at her with large eyes. Her voice is hoarse and full of emotion, more tears falling. She remembers the night up in the hotel in London; he had been so very drunk and his kisses… She should not think of them.  She is Arty’s now. The owl’s voice brings her mind back to the present.

“He will sleep. He said he would. He can look after himself.” Fluffy the owl’s voice is full of concern for her. “What are we going to do about the water spirit things?” She shakes her head.
“I don’t know. I could go and talk to them again I guess. Or ask someone else what they think about it maybe,” she speaks solemnly and then sighs. “I need to do more to help. Lucan cannot do it all on his own.” Determination creeps into her voice. “I wish I could do something to help him.”

“He’s your friend, and he’s polite, I’ll help him if I can. What are you going to do?”

She looks away shaking her head a little. “I don’t know. I need to think about it. I can’t go and fight beasts, I’d only get in the way.”

Fluffy snuggles against her.

****

Something shuddered next to her and she felt a lurch as she almost fell. Her eyes snapped open, struggling to stay on the bed. Scrabbling with the covers, she managed to avoid the floor. What on earth? She sat up, suddenly remembering where she was. Arty lay next to her, shifting around in his sleep. She felt his skin on hers and memory returned to her, her silvery cheeks flushing and her heart skipping a beat. She looked at him with a smile, breathing in his cinnamon scent, before frowning. As he shifted his expression contorted with fear and pain. A nightmare. Panicking slightly, she leant back down, her hand touching lightly on his temple, her thoughts drifting.  Casting around for anything, she pushed into Arty’s mind. Changing the dreamscape there with her agreement.

The breeze fluttered the leaves tentatively above her head, the mottled sunlight dancing on her skin. She exhaled, it had worked. She looked around, her eyes searching the forest around her. Autumn it was, or late summer and the plants were bearing fruit around them.  The leaves were a mixture of golden brown and green depending on how the plants felt.  A large table cloth was stretched out in the clearing where she knelt. She smiled at Arty and his answering smile was full of surprise. “You changed it?”

“Yes, you were having a nightmare I think. Nearly pushed me out of bed,” she teased, lightly, smiling. He blushed slightly, looking guilty.

“Sorry. I- I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

She smiled, taking his hand. “It’s okay.”

He put his arm around her and he sighed happily. The air warm on her skin, she looked around once more. It was exactly as she remembered it, only the flowers on the forest floor were still growing.  It had been a good picnic in the waking world, the last one of summer and everyone had a good time lounging about, eating and throwing flowers at each other.  They had named Biff the champion of summer, after Mortar had beaten them all in the competitions. Everyone had joined in; or nearly everyone. The only downside was that Arty hadn’t been there, that would have made it perfect.

Sitting up, she gently manipulated him so that he was lying down with his head in her lap as she ran her fingers through his hair. “I love you Arty.”

Pulling herself out of his dream, she blinked, looking down at him once again. His sleeping form now lay peacefully, a smile on his lips. He moved slightly, not waking, taking hold of her hand and holding it to him, starting to snore gently.

I recently had the pleasure of writing and running a one-off World of Darkness scenario called “Fresh Meat” for a weekly meeting. While I was working on the game I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the general process of writing a one-off  scenario.

This article is the result of that thinking. Hopefully you will find it useful if you’re interested in running a one-off game, especially if you’ve never done so before.

The Seed

The first thing I do, even before deciding on the system to use, is to brainstorm a story seed. This can be a group idea, a  particular set-piece, a setting, an object or a fully fledged plot idea.

The best way to get ideas for seeds is to steep yourself in fiction. Read books, play video games, watch films and TV. Pay attention to interesting scenes, characters and story tropes. TV Tropes is a great source for distilled plot ideas: there they dismantle stories and describe the nuts and bolts from which they are constructed.

Here are some examples of plot seeds that I’ve used in my own one-off games and a brief description of their origins:

“Terminators versus Transformers”

Here the plot-seed was from the title “Transformers: Killing John Connor”, handily given to me wholesale by Jen when she mis-described my GameCon 2009 game as this rather than Terminator: Killing John Connor.

“Freshers in Canterbury”

The plot seed for this game was the idea of making the characters instantly recognisable to the players by making them freshers in Canterbury. The modern setting and my large degree of familiarity with the Word of Darkness made this choice of system to use and from there the story pretty much wrote itself.

“The Poseidon Adventure in the World of Darkness”

I think I ran this in the year of the “Poseidon Adventure” remake. The trailers made me think that the film would have been a lot more interesting if the survivors of the cruise liner disaster had been either something other than human or faced with a supernatural threat in addition to simple survival.

“Zombie survival horror game”

This one was pretty easy. I was thinking that it would be good fun to run a zombie game using the map tiles and zombie figures from “Zombies!!!”. I went for a nice traditional start in a mall and the game kind of wrote itself from there.

“Monster made out of spunk and hair from students’ drains”

I already knew I wanted to run “The Esoterrorists” that year and I was thinking about what would make a suitable gribbly terror with which to squick out my players. I think I’d seen a passive aggressive sign about blocking the shower online and it came to mind when I was thinking about it.

The Outline

Once I have the Seed, I start to think about the general outline of the plot. This builds on the basic premise of the Seed and takes the form of one or two sentences that describe the beginning and the middle of the plot. You could also describe one or more endings in the outline but personally I prefer to avoid this in order to avoid subconsciously limiting the players’ options.

The beginning of your outline establishes the setting and starting scenario. This can be an ‘in media rez’ beginning where the players are already involved in action of some kind or a more sedate beginning.

The middle of your outline describes the core goal and tension of the plot. What is it that the players are going to seek to do? What opposition will they face?

Here are example outlines for the previous Seeds:

“The Autobots discover that they are the future of a world in which Skynet wins due to Decepticon meddling in the past. They meet with Optimus Prime and are sent back in time to prevent the assassination of John Connor while the Decepticons go back to kill him.”

“The players are out in town at a new club when one of them is propositioned by a vampire and taken away. A mysterious tramp (a burnt-out Hunter) warns them that their friend is in danger and tells them where the vampire can be found.”

“The players are enjoying a pleasure cruise when the ship is turned upside down due to a magical curse. They must escape the ship whilst fending off zombies and other dangers that have been awakened by the curse, which is attached to a stolen necklace.”

“The players start out at a mall during the early hours of the zombie apocalypse. They must band together and fight their way to an emergency evacuation point.”

“The group is banded together and sent to a university to examine an occult murder. The Esoterrorists have a plot on the University campus involving sex energy and sacrifice, resulting in the creation of hideous monsters made out of human secretions. They must find out who is behind the plot and bring them to justice.”

System

The choice of System may be an easy one, if your Seed lent itself naturally to a particular game or setting. Whatever, you should pick one you’re familiar with and which ideally you have run before.

The Characters

Next I like to develop the characters. Doing this before I’ve written more than a basic outline for the plot is actually quite useful because it allows me to write the more detailed plot synopsis with particular characters, relationship dynamics or systems (e.g. skills or powers) in mind.

Each character should strongly relate to the outline you’ve written and provide its player with the opportunity to perform a useful or interesting role in the group. It should generally be clear to the player what role that is.

It is also essential to create links between the characters. They don’t all have to be tied to each other in  a complex web of intrigue, but having each character linked to one or two others does provide easy roleplaying fodder for the players as they sink into the game and can create great moments of drama later on.

If you have the time it’s extremely helpful to write on each character sheet a summary of the character’s capabilities. Providing descriptions of Merits, flaws, powers, equipment and so on should streamline the process of running the game for inexperienced players and also help to maintain the game’s pace during combat by cutting down on reference time.

Finally I like to give each character a brief one-paragraph biography and a list of personality keywords (e.g. Shy, Aggressive, Doubtful, Vindictive) and motivations (e.g. Prove myself to my parents, Uphold the Jedi Code, Look after my friends).  These turn the blank sheet of the character’s personality into more of a ‘connect the dots’ arrangement that gives its player a place from which to start. You can also consider these things during your plot-writing when trying to ascertain the group’s most likely course of action in any given circumstance. Someone with the motivation “Never back down” can probably be relied upon to engage with the enemy rather than flee, for instance.

The Plot

It’s finally time to turn your attention to the actual plot. My GMing style is somewhat improvisational so I don’t actually have that much work to do here. For the most part I dedicate myself to the set-up of the scenario and then allow things to develop from there, perhaps planning out a couple of contingencies in case the group doesn’t act as I expect during the early part of the game.

The easiest way to illustrate this is to show you my notes for “Fresh Meat”:

Act I:              The Night Out

Scene 1:       An Exclusive New Club

So it’s about 11pm and half the group is already pretty drunk (with the soberest of the group likely to be Connor Wright and Lucy Ambrose). They’ve heard about a new club in town called “The Edge” (in a building up near the cinema where Studio 41 used to be) and as we join them they are standing in the queue to get into the club. Everyone else in the queue has a promotional flyer that apparently gives them exclusive access to the club on its opening night. Amrita, however, is pretty certain that she can talk the bouncers into letting them into the club.

While they are standing in the queue a beautiful woman in a mink coat and slinky red cocktail dress will make her way to the front of the queue; drawing attentive looks from all the guys as she passes.

As she passes Lucy Ambrose Lucy will feel her hackles rising and her heartbeat will accelerate. She gets a dry, coppery feeling in her mouth and she starts to tremble slightly. Her reaction has all the hallmarks of a fight-or-flight adrenaline response, but of course she will have no idea why.

Sean Hunt is particularly stricken by the women’s looks and will zone out a bit watching her as she briefly speaks to the bouncer before being let inside.

Then we will cut to the group arriving at the front of the queue, allowing Amrita an opportunity to put her Bar Fly merit to good use. The bouncer will seem vaguely amused at letting the group in.

Scene 2:       Inside “The Edge”

The club is built on two levels with a mezzanine ringing the dance floor where the music is of a lower volume so that conversation can be had. There is a bar on each level and the mezzanine level features couches and tables for people to relax.

The music is a mixture of trance and euphoria and the lighting inside the club pulses in shades of red and pink, shadows swirling around the edges of the dance floor. The next few vignettes should feel a little staccato and disconnected, as if viewed under the light of a strobe.

Lucy gets a weird feeling twice more while she’s inside the club (more if she goes near Julianna Swan again). Once when she passes close to a man in a business suit who is standing at the railing of the mezzanine level and once, for no discernible reason, when she passes a shadowed area on her way to the ladies’ toilets.

Sean Hunt separates from the rest of the group and goes to find Julianna. They probably won’t notice he’s gone until they see him curled up on a couch with her, necking.

Some of the characters (pick the players who seem most socially confident) get hit on by other patrons of the club, or are offered drugs.

One of the group catches sight of Sean leaving hand-in-hand with the beautiful woman, obviously infatuated with her.

Scene 3:       Aftermath

They leave the club (either early if Lucy can convince the others there’s something wrong or at closing time) and start heading back up to campus. Some of them will be even drunker but at least a couple of them may be somewhat sane.

They pass by a homeless guy nearby who’s huddled up in a bulky old coat. As they go by he calls out, “Your friend is going to die”.

Lucy at least is probably spooked enough by now that she might pause to listen to him. The others may write him off as a crazy old man, but…

He won’t talk to them during the hours of darkness. He tells them to come back during the day and he’ll talk to them then. Their friend will be fine for at least the first night, he’s sure.

Act II:            The Hunt

The game now has the potential to branch in two directions.

Direction 1:    The group speaks to the tramp, Frank. Frank is an ex-hunter who lost everything when he went after the vampire who took his son; the same vampire who took Sean. He can help them to find her lair but he won’t go with them unless they are extremely persuasive.

Direction 2:    The group dismisses the tramp and tries not to worry about Sean. In this case Julianna will come after them as she saw them at the night club and knows that they (or at least some of them) suspect. She might begin by sending her retainers to investigate in the guise of campus security (they’ll set Lucy’s teeth on edge) but eventually she’ll end up coming after them herself to protect the Masquerade.

Of course the group may dismiss what Frank has to say even if they meet him, in which case we’ll start with Direction 1 and then go to Direction 2.

As you can see I spent a fair bit of time in establishing the initial set-up and invoking the mood, but hardly any time in plotting specifically how the ‘hunt’ would go. It’s not in my plot synopsis notes but I also spent some time developing the antagonist, Victoria Swann, and in coming up with some disturbing and creepy trappings for her lair.

If I had more time I would have drawn a simple map of the night club and of Victoria’s lair, but I was able to wing these on the day without too much difficulty.

You can of course develop your plot more thoroughly than this but be aware that time is limited in a one-off game and it can be disappointing to players if they don’t “make it to the end”.

One good way of building a plot is to have modular scenes that you can snap in or leave out depending on how much time you turn out to have during play. These can be quite simple but provide for a considerable amount of roleplaying. Here is one example:

Snap-in scene – Trapped

Location: Victoria Swann’s Lair – lounge hallway

Hook: The group hears muffled banging emanating from the walls. Investigation reveals a hollow compartment in which someone has been walled up. Someone who begs for help as they hear the group pass by.

The End

So there you have it, my thoughts on the process of writing a one-off scenario. I appreciate that my process is likely to be different from others’, but perhaps you will have found it interesting to get an insight into an alternative way of doing things.

How do you come up with your one-off plots? Did I miss out anything obvious? Please let me know in the comments below.

Have fun!

This short story is set in the same universe as my Monday night GURPS Monster Hunters/Cyberpunk campaign, a dark future where the lowlifes and mega-corporations aren’t the only dangers lurking in the shadows. Here a group of freelance corporate espionage agents find out that the simple job they thought they were taking on wasn’t so easy after all…

Cross checked over his pistol manually, just to be sure. The cybernetic linkup through his palm should notify him of any problems, but it never hurt to take a second look. Not that he was expecting tonight to be troublesome; he and his associates had been hired to appropriate a Eurere Biotech transport truck and drop it off on the outskirts of St Louis, a relatively simple snatch and grab.

Cross wasn’t certain who was actually paying for this job, but then it wasn’t healthy to ask too many questions. Still, with Eurere being responsible for several breakthroughs in their field, there was no shortage of their rivals wanting a peek at what they were up to.

“Target acquired. Approaching on schedule.” Orson was two blocks away, on top of the billboard strewn roof of the Metro-6 motel, covering the entire area with the telescopic scope on his SCAR rifle. Down the street from Cross, Keller started the engine of the stolen garbage truck and began to move towards the intersection.

Keller’s timing was perfect – plotted on his neural HUD from the mini-cameras that they’d set up earlier in the day. He struck the unmarked sedan driving escort in front of the truck with a solid broadside, smashing it to the side of the road. At the same time one of Orson’s SCAR rounds entered the tail escort’s fuel tank, punching through the thin case before detonating. The fireball consumed the car, but Cross didn’t wait to watch; the plan required perfect timing.

Already he was running from his place of concealment to where the transport was coming to a halt in front of Keller’s garbage truck. He gave silent thanks to the army for his boosted leg muscles as he covered the space and bounded up to the door. Two ten millimetre rounds from his pistol shattered the driver’s skull before he had a chance to react.

Immediately Cross dropped back to the ground and headed to the back of the truck. Keller was already approaching the cab, ready to drive to the drop off point. Cross broke the seal on the rear doors and swung them open, gracefully jumping up. Reacting to the deeper darkness inside the truck his eyes amped up what light was available, turning the world shades of green and grey, with orange and red tinges indicating only a few faint heat sources. He glanced around. “Clear, no one in the back.” Cautiously he approached the large white container secured in the middle of the truck. “What have we here?”

Shifting his pistol to his other hand he reached down and released the catches. With a hiss and cloud of cold vapour the cover slid up. Cross lifted it open and involuntarily took a half step back. “Jeez, they got a dead body back here…” With an unconscious impulse his eyes shifted further to infrared, reassuring him the body was indeed cold as death. Cross let the lid fall back, neglecting to secure it, and turned his attention to the other equipment in the truck. He didn’t notice the lid being lifted from inside, or the cold, dead body get to its feet behind him, didn’t notice anything wrong in fact until the fangs entered his neck.

At that point, it was already too late.

Introduction

What the fuck? What the flying fuck? GW have shat on the Inquisition and focused their attention on their Chuck Norris Clone gimps in shiny armour?

Yes I know it’s a shock and will cue the nerd rage that once again the Inquisition has been forced to take a backseat in the wargame despite being the best thing about the Imperium. Especially as the goody two shoes Knights now have centre stage.

It appears at first that once again us Radicals have been betrayed in favour of our bone headed Puritan cousins.

However fear not this is not a betrayal. In fact it is a call to arms for Radicals and Inquisitor fans everywhere.

How? Well let’s have a look.

Background

You do get the impression the big shiny guys have the majority of page count here which is fair enough because it’s really their codex. But don’t skip out on this stuff if you’re more interested in the crazy shit than the shinies.

Why? The Grim Dark Future has just got grimmer and darker and even the previously squeaky clean Knights have been affected.

Many times in old background stories the Knights have been holding back Inquisitors as they go on purges. Now the Knights are active in the purging: Even more so than the Inquisition in fact. How do they use the tiny little bit of independence they have in the new retcon? Blowing up passenger liners, that’s how!

But surely, you say, that’s just typical Puritanism which makes sense, well that’s just the tip of the new iceberg of badassery.

The Inquisition background is pretty sketchy as you would expect but it does make clear that Grey Knights are no longer the exclusive property of the Puritan factions. They’re the gimps of Radicals now too. So long as you have a Rosette you are entitled to, you are the boss to the new boys in silver.

As you will see in the Mechanics overview this makes me one happy heretic!

It goes further though. The Knights themselves have been taking ever more desperate measures to stem the Daemonic tide. There is Grey Knight special character who is armed with a Daemonsword. Supposedly this is because as chief Purifier he is completely incorruptible but nevertheless it’s nice to have some sanction for our methods from Space Marines that HAVEN’T been excommunicated.

So those are the retcons and they are mostly for the better. Though they have been sidelined the Inquisition are clearly in charge and working behind the scenes which kind of suits them more than sticking their big pompous heads above the parapet.

Don’t worry though. As we will see Inquisitors are still available as choices in the army and interesting ones at that.

Other than that the Background is relatively sound. It is nice to have the Grey Knights’ foundation story at last because the “ooooh big mystery” crap got really irritating. Also the guided tour of Titan was a real eye-opener. Again the presence of alien and forbidden tech propping up the supposedly “purest” chapter was a nice touch. Hypocrisy, bigotry and corruption is what makes the Imperium a very human setting.

Mechanics

So what is a Grey Knights army like then?

Well there is good news and bad news.

The bad news is it IS a Grey Knight army. Unless you fancy having that bastard Coteaz hanging around there is no way to have Inquisitors and random weirdoes only.

Also there are no Allies rules which annoyed me as I have a bunch of Relictors who fancy being bossed around by my Radical.

Oh well guess I’ll have to boss around some Knights instead!

The good news the Inquisition have finally, after all these years been done justice.

The Grey Knights are clearly placed at the beck and call of the Inquisition. While if you do want to go “pure knights” you can, it is heavily implied that it is the Inquisition that are behind the scenes.

Not just the Malleus either. You can have Hereticus and Xenos boss around the boys in silver too!

Each Ordo gives you access to unique equipment options though they have the same base profile and points cost. Alas they each use up a HQ choice so you can’t have all 3 Ordos represented but for 25 points base for a 3 wound model with Stubborn and Leadership 10 you’re really laughing.

The equipment options are awesome. Even the grenades, something which no edition since 3^rd has managed to do well, are interesting; particularly the Rad Grenades that down those super human Toughnesses for a turn. But it is the arcane stuff that really kicks arse as you would expect.

Malleus can pick Daemonblades and Hellrifles (not to be confused with Hellguns the old name for Hot Shots) for the Radically inclined and Nemesis Daemon Hammers, Terminator Armour and even Psycannons are available for those of you who like to play it straight. Daemonblades deserve a special mention. They are nowhere near as powerful as the Chaos equivalent but they don’t backfire. They are 2 handed and grant 2 bonuses selected at random. These can potentially be quite deadly as even the lowest roll gives you +3 Strength.

Hereiticus are stereotypically bombastic with their Inferno Pistols being added to the mix along with Null Rods and the ever popular Bolter-Stake Crossbow which is now called a Condemnor Boltgun. Also a massively beefed Psyocculm is the perfect foil for Psyker-heavy armies. Particularly Grey Knights!

Xenos of course were denied their Codex by the revamp but Games Workshop make up for it here with a wide variety of arcane, alien and forbidden gear that makes the Xenos option somewhat tempting though you have to think what your tooled-up alien hunter is doing hanging around the boys in silver.

Unfortunately the new version of the Inquisition seems somewhat biased against Psyker Inquisitors.  Being psychic is a 30 point upgrade, requires you to take a free force sword and gives you the choice of 2 rather mediocre psychic powers. They’re both pretty neutral in terms of Puritan/Radical and can be justified as either. Whilst it would have been nice to have some Radical powers and maybe a couple of cleansing flame types for the Puritans it is understandable not to give these really cheap characters too much power. Also it is nice that it is now a reasonable tactical option not to have your Inquisitor psychic.

There is also a lack of an Invulnerable save option for an Inquisitor, which will make sense when everything is revamped and Invulnerable Saves become as rare as they are supposed to be, but for now puts the Inquisitor at a disadvantage.

Of course each Inquisitor gives you access to a Retinue of weirdos and boy are they weird! The stupid “boost your stats by taking the scribe” mechanic has been dumped. Each henchman can actually fight (albeit only as well as a trained human for the most part), has either flak armour or some sort of innate Invulnerable Save and advantage is gained beyond mere stat boosts in taking each type.

The types of henchmen have been seriously revised.

The formally independent Death Cultists, Daemonhosts and Arco Flagellants are now in the retinue with a slight toning down of power. Cultists give you Strength 4 power weapon attacks which can be most helpful with all those feeble human Strengths around. Daemonhosts are just as strong and tough as Marines but have only a 5+ Invulnerable to protect them and with no weapons it’s just the 1 attack. They do have a random trick up their sleeve with Daemon powers though which, though they are considerably more subtle in tone, are just as fun as the old stuff. Arco Flagellants get the biggest nerf, losing all their silly holy frenzy rules and with electro flails no longer counting as Power Weapons.

Just because it makes an energy discharge when you hit someone doesn’t make it a Power Weapon.

The old support staff that are actually useful are back in a slightly different form. Banishers are dedicated Daemon fighting clerics with preferred enemy Daemons and an ability to force nearby Daemons to re-roll successful saves. Crusaders are now extremely badass with the new Storm Shields and power weapons. The price tag is high though. Though the power claw option is removed servitors are reliable as ever, though keep your Inquisitor close or their brains melt! Mystics are now homing beacons for teleporters: Useful when you need some silver armoured gimps to save your arse! Psykers (separate from Mystics) bring down a punishing ordinance attack that gets stronger the more Psykers you have. Again, my radical brothers, it is heavily implied that these are UNSANCTIONED Psykers. AWESOME!

Finally there is a catch-all category for your Warrior henchmen, covering Guardsmen, Arbites, Hive Gangers, Bounty Hunters and even Battle Sisters. The equipment options for these guys are quite flexible though the lack of shotguns, grenade launchers, heavy stubbers and sniper rifles may be disappointing for some. Shotguns mostly! Too many awesome shotgun armed figures you can’t use!

Anyway there is also a new kid on the block. A bionic Orang-utan.

Yes seriously!

The Jokaero will be known to all background addicts like me as a nearly extinct species of ape-like Xenos who invented Digi Weapons. Well it looks like the Inquisition are breeding them because they’re finally on the 40K battlefield and beyond squad size there is no limit to how many!

Jokaero are techies granting you random equipment bonuses but they also pack fearsome Digi Weapons capable of turning into a Lascannon, Multimelta or Heavy Flamer at will. Unfortunately their physiques have degraded through over reliance on technology so with Weapon Skill 1 and Strength 2 they will need a butch Inquisitor, Crusader, Cultist or Warrior to defend them in Assault.

Templar Assassins retain their independence though the rules about deployment have been relaxed; you can have multiple Templar Assassins so long as they are from different temples. You are admitting to your opponent that things are really bad though, especially with their beefed stats. The “ignore Invulnerable Saves” ability has been nerfed a bit but I guess that is part of the overall revamp. Necron fans expect to have your Warsycthes toned down too. Sorry!

Well so much for the interesting stuff now for the Gimps.

Okay to be fair Knights are nowhere near as bland and uninteresting. They are no longer Fearless, Aegis has been toned down and although they are all Psychic most of them can only manifest the new version of Hammerhand which simply adds +1 Strength and occasionally a unit specific power of some sort.

There is now a lot more variety to the Knights than there was. In Daemonhunters there was pretty much only Power Armour Knights and Terminator Knights. Purgators were there but they just had more heavy weapon options.

Now a there are a wide variety of Knights with Terminators and Plain Power Armour “Strike Squads” taking up Troops while the various other choices get their own types, all of which can be built with the basic plastic sets.

HQ now includes, in addition to the beefed up Grand Master and Captain, a Librarian and Champion.

The Champion was a predictable addition as all the Marine offshoots seem to be getting one these days. Although I miss the days when only the Fists offshoots could take them this makes the game more character-driven which in my opinion is awesome.

The Librarian is a surprise though. Why would a chapter where every marine is psychic need one? Well first there is the new Psychic Mastery system allowing you to use multiple powers in a turn. Grey Knight Librarians can use 2 and potentially upgrade to 3! Secondly you can mix and match the best of the Grey Knight powers with some of the Librarian powers from the Marines codex. That is a lot of brain hurt!

Elites have Paladins who are the best of the best Terminators and Purifiers who are the best of the best Power Armour. Purifiers are also supposed to be incorruptible but we all know who they said that about *cough* Quixos *cough.* Also Techmarines are copy pasted from Marines with the addition of a tech-minded Psychic power. Nice to know that it’s not just space monkeys maintaining the gear!

Fast Attack has the addition of Interceptors, who have personal teleporters. More stolen Xenos tech; I like these guys! Stormravens appear too to sell more of those hideously expensive fliers. Games Workshop will never change!

Finally Heavy Support has Purgatation Squads, 3 forms of Land Raider, Dreadnaughts and of course the Dreadknight Monstrous Creature. Yeah this big Aliens rip off is there to compensate for the fact if an actual Dreadnaught were to take on a Monstrous Creature it would have its arse handed to it in short order even if its weapons do now count as force weapons as well as the usual Double Strength Monstrous Creature thing. Purgatation Squads remain loaded with heavy gear but now they have a unique Psychic power to help them shoot round corners.

With that let’s look at the Grey Knight’s gear.

Every Knight having a Halberd was boring, so now Nemesis Force Weapons come in a wide variety. They all count as Force Weapons and have an additional Instant Kill chance against Daemons similar to a Diresword. Individual types do different things. Your bog standard sword gives you +1 to Invulnerable Saves if you have one, making it especially deadly with a Storm Shield. Halberds (if you are reusing your 3^rd-4^th edition stuff this will be your majority) add +2 Initiative. Daemonhammers are now Nemesis Daemonhammers combining the Thunderhammer rules with the basic Nemesis ones. No you don’t get to strike at normal Initiative against Daemons though! Warding Staves give you an awesome 2+ Invulnerable Save albeit only in Assault. Falchions give you +1 Attack, Grey Knight Dreadnaught Combat Weapons are now Nemesis weapons, and Dreadknights can wield huge overpowered swords that are also Nemesis Weapons.

Shooting wise you may be struggling. Yes there is a new Arcane big gun on the block, the awkwardly named Psilencer, but it is quite low powered and strictly anti infantry. Incinerators and Psycannons have lost their Invulnerable save ignoring ability but Psycannons have another point of Strength, Rending, a set range of 24 regardless of mode and the Heavy mode is now Heavy 4. Dreadknights have a heavier version that is Large Blast but if you really want one of those things hanging out with your army there is something wrong with you.

If you need to deal with tanks with a Grey Knight force you have to rely on the Inquisition, Meltabombs and any Dreadnaughts you have to do the job.

Aside from this weapons are, for the most part, good at what they do – which is not bad for a combat focused army.

Overall the mechanical side of the codex seems fair and balanced whilst encouraging you to embrace the weirdness of the Inquisition and not just build another Marine Variant.

Atmosphere

Whereas Daemonhunters cast the Knights as real goody two shoes who jarred completely with the Corrupt Totalitarian Madness of the Imperium, this new Codex shows their shiny silver armour hides a much darker side.

This has echoes of how the Inquisition were revealed to be not so squeaky clean with the release of the Inquisitor Specialist Game.

After the near loss against the 13^th Black Crusade the Imperium seems to be getting much more desperate and hopeless all round. Knights are more human than they were previously portrayed and have the fallibility and desperation that make the Imperium such a great setting.

I can now see how Grey Knights can tolerate working with Inquisitors of a Radical bent. They aren’t too far from Radicals themselves!

Artwork

Most of the stuff that isn’t reprinted is new looks at the boys in silver which is a bit of a shame with all the new weird stuff but it can’t be helped.

The painting guide is up to the usual standard, though it can be hard to tell the difference between some of the different unit types. I guess that is a general problem with the Marines and Sisters though.

Conclusion

I was expecting a clusterfuck of epic proportions and a final death blow to Radicalism. Instead I have the triumph of the radical way and the humanising of supposed super saints in silver! I for one approve.

Though I do have one gripe. Why can’t these awesome new Inquisitors lead my other Imperial armies? I can understand abolishing the old Allies rules as they were just there to get Power Gamers their squads of Knights for “pwnage” but surely we could have Inquisitors turn up with their minions leading Guard or Marines? They are, after all, mostly base human stats with nothing particularly game breaking.

Oh well at least the Inquisition are back and more Radical than ever.

In the memory of Quixos!

Verdict

Style 9/10

Substance 8/10

Overall 8/10

Here is a Fiction Piece from my Changeling: the Lost LARP character.

Apologies for my poor grammar [What poor grammar? This blog has an editor for a reason, you know! - Ed.] and to Laura for putting my words into her character’s mouth. Hopefully she won’t disapprove.

I stared hard and warily at my ice skates. They looked almost impossible to balance on, having only small slivers of metal to connect me to the ground. I don’t really like the ice, not that I’ll admit it. Ice is harsh, unending and freezing, but worst of all Ice reminds me of when I escaped and was lost. Sighing slightly I started to remove my boots, doing so slowly in the hopes that the inevitable would not happen.

Sally had convinced me that Ice-Skating would be a fantastic way to spend the evening and at the time it seemed like a great idea, but now I sat next to the rink I was not so sure.

I placed my boots to one side and continued to stare at the skates, like I was willing them to disappear. I’ve fought giant man-eating monsters and rescued Blizzard from almost certain doom, more than once, and these shoes made me nervous; the thought of this made me laugh slightly.

“Hurry up, Arty,” Sally giggled from across the ice, already skating.

“I’m Hurrying”, I replied, hoping the beaming smile on my face didn’t give anything away or seem too fake.

Sally seemed convinced and sped away contentedly. As I watched her on the ice she seemed so balanced; she glided across the ice easily, almost as though she had done it for years. I was surprised to learn earlier that Sally had only been ice-skating once before. I placed my feet into the skates and began to buckle them up just as Sally had shown me earlier. When I was done I stared back down at my feet. Let’s see if I can do this.

I pushed myself hesitantly off the chair, holding onto the arm to steady myself and began walking awkwardly out onto the rink. The ice made me shiver and I reached out to stop myself falling. Little by little I made it onto the ice, realising exactly how impossible it was to balance. Sally noticed me stumbling and skated towards me to help. Her help, however, consisted of mocking me; she stuck her tongue out at me in a way I didn’t think she could, a teasing, “I’m better than you”, kind of way. Coming from her. It was unexpected.

“Bet you can’t catch me,” she chimed, skating away as fast as she could. I was still unsteady on the ice but I began to slowly skate after her – until I fell unceremoniously onto my backside.

Sally saw my distress and skated back to help. “Are you okay?” she asked, somewhat amused. I looked up at her and nodded, accepting her offered hand.

“Yeah, I think so,” I replied. Unsteadily, I managed to stand. The Waterborn smiled and began skating by herself again, creating small circles around me. I watched her movements again and tried to mimic her style of skating; step, glide, step, glide; until  my skates gave way and I fell face first onto the ice, a burning stinging sensation across my mouth. I wiped it gently to find blood.

Sally skated back over, and saw me bleeding. She leant down and looked at my mouth closely; I felt silly and worried that I had caused her this trouble. After a while she gently tilted my head back for a closer look.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” she commented, “But let’s get off the ice for now.” I nodded, my mouth a little too raw to form words at her. Sally offered me her arm again and I used it to stand up, slowly; I didn’t want to fall again. Sally wrapped her arm around my waist and she led me back off the ice and over to the bench. “Sit,” she demanded, pointing at the chair. I sat down as Sally hurried off somewhere. I looked down at my skates and I cursed them; wishing death upon the inanimate objects  seemed stupid but I wanted to do it anyway.

I concentrated as the glamour coursed through my veins into my hands, my power beginning to build. It was then I felt a hand on mine.

“Wait!”

Sally had returned and was carrying a small first aid kit. She placed it down next to me and opened the lid. She rummaged through the kit looking for a small alcohol wipe – the kind you get at fast food restaurants –  before removing one from the box.

“I know you could have healed that easily,” she said as she removed the wipe from the packet, “but It’s my fault for persuading you to come here.”

It wasn’t her fault at all, but It felt nice that someone was fussing over my injury. Ice-skating hasn’t defeated me yet.

One of the often underused attributes in any RPG is that of language. Most believable worlds are vast and have characteristics similar to our own and when your epic heroes travel further away it makes sense that they encounter people who can’t speak the same language as them, I need only to take a small boat ride to France to encounter a totally different primary language.

On a Meta level it makes sense that you don’t want to spend an hour of every game session having communication difficulties and it makes sense that for the majority of interactions you will stick to a common language,  but it can be used as a great tool by the GM.

Sci-Fi shows do this all the time, but the explanations can become quite ridiculous. (The God’s slaves were taken away in spaceships thousands of years ago, so every world has humans and they all speak English – a language not invented yet). Bonus points if you realised that was Stargate.

In a fantasy setting your basic Elf will know Elven and Common, but the fact that he can speak any language other than Common is often overlooked or forgotten, and GM’s should exploit this; why should an Elven Lord speak to the party to which the Elf belongs in a non-native tongue if  he doesn’t trust them? He can ask as many questions as he wishes of his elf kin without offending his potential guests or taking physical action against the strangers to his city.

This small exchange in a foreign language can emphasise that the PC’s are not in Kansas anymore. They will become conscious that they are foreigners in a place where customs are different. NPC’s will treat them differently due to the way they speak due to natural mistrust. Disaster could occur to the PC’s if they cause a grave social faux pas by refusing to drink a strange gold liquid. Some traditions can be rather bizarre.

In another instance the local farmer you ask for directions on the road isn’t going to have travelled far and a simple “Which way to town?” may be met with shrugs or a face that says, “You what now?” This can be a great roleplaying opportunity for the PC’s to get a simple message across and when most communication breaks down we opt for semantics or visual languages which can provide challenge, frustration or humour; or most likely all three.

In a recent campaign I played we encountered an Alien lifeform with no concept of spoken language. Up to this point all our communication was translated into our native language in real time. (Ah the joys of technology) and the challenge of convincing an alien entity we wanted to help was interesting.

On first glance I thought this would be frustrating and unnecessarily complicated for our characters as we attempted to rescue this poor alien and the rest of its race from impending capture but I was very wrong. The challenge of trying to communicate with the alien being was incredibly interesting.

After killing some enemies of the organisation we worked for, it’s difficult to say “Hi, we come in peace, those guys were bad but we’re not, honest!”

How does an alien comprehend human semantics?, If I were to give you the thumbs up, you would know this meant yes or good a global concept amongst civilisation [Except where it doesn't - in some "civilised" countries it's a grave insult! http://www.slate.com/id/2080812/ - Ed.], but these difficulties lead to great opportunities for roleplaying,and to utilize our characters’ non-combative skills. The situation escalated with a Party member’s DNA being rewritten to become more alien-like, which led to us having limited if humorous communication with the alien, such as “Your alien sensory input detects an odd chemical pheromone, with a slight smell of yoghurty burnt nutmeg.”

Stories can revolve around language and can be fascinating. Common or English maybe a catch all language in the setting but I think an occasional language barrier can be a good thing in an RPG.

There are many types of gamer in the world. To some roleplaying is their life, to others it’s just a casual hobby. So who are you?

The Mad Gamer

The Mad Gamer is one of the rarest player types but can be one of the most fun.  The Mad Gamer loves serious roleplaying. He takes props to games, such as a matchbox to fiddle with if his character is nervous; he selects world appropriate names, sometimes searching for hours and enveloping himself in the game’s genre, defiantly not creating something off the top of his head.

The Mad Gamer creates “concept” characters and will do idiotic things in character, even if it means certain death to everyone. You’re a Mad Gamer if you decide that your meddling kid character will pull every lever in sight, and you stick to it even if it is the lever to start the nuclear reactor’s self destruct.

The Mad Gamer doesn’t Min-Max, preferring to have experience left over rather than creating a stronger character, if that stronger character doesn’t fit his concept. But he expects his GM to return in kind with challenges of a tailored nature; if he creates a sneaky rogue he expects Stealth, Mystery and Heists and without these challenges for his character he will soon get bored. If the GM is running a combat heavy game, if his “concept” doesn’t  mesh with the game at hand he will most likely find another game.

This type of player is always asking “What would my character do and why?”

The Munchkin (Powergamer – Min/Maxer)

Munchkins design powerful characters. Munchkins try and bleed every last point of Armour, Health and Bonus available in the system. If there is a way to gain an edge within the game she’ll find it. The Munchkin creates characters that generally don’t follow a concept rather a design to be the “best”, and her character really shines in its chosen field. If she is a Ranged specialist, she will be able to bullseye a target 5 miles away (but not do much else).

If one class seems to most powerful she will select it (*cough* Druid) and if the game uses a points based system the character will be reworked to be optimised, (finding that ridiculously rare race to give you the +2 Wisdom Bonus for your Druid, even if only 10 exist in a population of 1 Billion).

The Munchkin does enjoy roleplaying, but she is locked into beating the game rather than immersing herself within it. A few problems with the Munchkin are that she can quickly become a “Rules Lawyer” especially when the GM puts a foot down to prevent ridiculous choices; another being that when her character dies she simply remakes a similar character, because it’s the best choice to beat the Game.

Mr Anderson

The Average Gamer, There is nothing extraordinary about Mr Anderson in either a good or bad way. He likes Roleplaying but hasn’t figured out his characters are meant to be different to each other; usually they are all essentially him. They act like him, think like him. Mr Anderson tends to go along with plans, but back him into a corner all alone and his decisions will be based on external influences including what other player characters will do rather than him thinking “what will my character do or think.”

Mr Anderson doesn’t take games too seriously and if another player begins to talk about Stargate Universe, Mr Anderson is most likely going to join in.

(My Advice to the Mr Anderson is to take the Red Pill)

The Copycat

The Copycat enjoys roleplaying but has a favourite movie or comic and when it comes time to choose a character concept she has to roleplay a hero from it. If allowed to she will quite happily act as her chosen hero.

Unfortunately, in game systems with random attributes and skill points it can be impossible for the Copycat to roll luckily enough to generate a character as epic as the one she is attempting to emulate, or she may not have enough starting points to complete her creation. Problems can also occur when the GM knows the character in question and can use his knowledge of the character’s weaknesses against her

The Copycat never understands why she can’t be exactly the same as the character she wants.

Mr Psycho

Mr Psycho likes roleplaying but only when the ball is in his court. Mr Psycho is the boss and anyone getting in his way is killed. If he doesn’t get his own way, the gravedigger will be working overtime. Mr Psycho believes his character to be the penultimate thing in the universe and if he doesn’t get a good price on his new weapon the shop keeper is not going to live long.

You are a Mr Psycho if after an hour of play you can’t remember how many NPC’s you’ve killed.

The Mr Psycho doesn’t play well with others (except maybe other Mr Psychos and combat monsters) and hates realistic settings when the cops are sent after mass murderers. Usually most Mr Psychos melt down into a Mr Anderson or …

The Combat Monster

Orcs! Orcs! Orcs!

The Combat Monster lives for one thing Fighting! Happiest when she is rolling dice and in the middle of battle, she will melt into the background and trundle along until another fight occurs. In combat heavy games The Combat Monster thrives, but those that reward good roleplaying and thinking are not the combat monster’s style.

Other types of Gamer exist such as the Boring Roomate who will only be at your game if nothing else is going on, he loves to be around his friends and will use every pause in the game to socialise. Mr Boring does not roleplay, that is when he does turn up. Another player you may encounter is the Boy/Girl Friend who is only there because they want to see what roleplaying is all about, sometimes joining in and sometimes being herded along by that player’s “other half”. They can be annoying but occasionally they can be converted to another player type. Finally there exists a sspecial layer of hell for the the following type of player:

Special Mention: The Rules Lawyer !

Try not to be a Rules Lawyer, it is a plague that can affect any type of player, though in my experience Munchkins are most susceptible. The Rules lawyer has read every book every published and could tell you what the Weaknesses of a Xorn was and, if they have munchkin tendencies, bring you up on it when you don’t apply the double damage bonus.

This isn’t to say a player can’t inquire about a rule she is unsure of, and all good GM’s will explain houserules before the game begins, but if a rules situation occurs during the game bring it up after the game! The GM may have been fudging the rules or did make a mistake, but arguing about such things during play slows the game to a crawl as even the most sane GM’s can be defensive when challenged.

Rules Lawyers also can’t separate Game knowledge from Character knowledge, If the player knows that another player is hiding from him in the well, he will do everything to jump in the well, from proclaiming it is too hot to swearing it was a family tradition when encountering wells to jump in them.

In short – always remember – Layer of Hell ^__^

So which Type are you?
Which Type am I?
Are there any I’ve missed out?