12 Angry Mercenaries

During my temporary break from the rigours of the world, I did schedule in some GMing/playtesting for my little critters in Xenopedia. Did I simply run an ordinary game of Savage Worlds substituting other aliens with my own creations or write a new adventure specifically to test these buggers out? Nope, not quite.

For a few months now, I've had an idea to test out an action/survival style of play akin to Aliens or Dog Soldiers. While the intention was to try it out for a different, Optional System-style system, something about Savage Worlds seemed appropriate so I said, "Fuck it!" and dove right in. The object is simple: have each player start with 4 characters, each one an exact clone as the other 11-15, and whittle them down to a few surviving 3 or 4 PCs.

A tskohan striking a pose. One of the new
xenon found in the upcoming Xenopedia.
Illustration by Andrew DeFelice.

Here's the plot. In this particular version of Mercenary Breed, a platoon of mercs work for the Ryleh Corporation, which specializes in prisons and remote law enforcement/security. Tasked with dropping off a high-profile inmate to a maximum security installation known simple as The X, the PCs need only escort their prisoner - a particularly bizarre xeno called a tskohan (see the concept artwork to the right) - from their shuttle to its cell and they're on their way back home.

If only that were true. Something's gone horribly wrong at The X. No sooner do they arrive and leave the comfort and protection of their ship, cells are flung open and a massive riot begins all around them. Their ship is ejected from the docking bay and blasted into bits, security droids are dispatched to eliminate the mercs, and everything in this place is looking to kill them. All of this orchestrated from unknown forces operating from the prison's main level. The mercs must now do everything they can to stay alive and figure out what the hell's going on in this floating madhouse of mayhem and death.

Here's the catch: each PC in the game does not start out as a full-fledged Wild Card. Kind of a half WC, half extra build. They all start with the same abilities (Agility d8, Smarts d4, Strength d8, Spirit d4, Vigor d6) and can assemble their own weaponry/armor (using the standard $500 starting point). All players have 4 mercenaries to start with. Once they've selected their gear and slapped on a name for their mercs, it's go time. Right into the action. As each merc is killed one-by-one, all currently surviving mercs receive 1 point towards character enhancement to spend as if they were still in character creation. What this does is allow each merc to become more and more defined as time goes on, plus allowing the players to adjust a merc or two to suit the challenge at hand. For example, if the players find themselves constantly in need of a tech in their crew, all it takes is one survivor to slap that point towards a Computer skill and now you have someone who can try and break the security code on the door.

Not Too Much Death, Not Too Much Survival

The challenge in adapting characters for Savage Worlds play is giving it just the right amount of death. This one's key because character progression is based on mortality, so just like any other system, you need to progress at just the right level. As I intended this adventure to run about 5-6 sessions and leave each player with at least 1 merc standing by the end, I needed to remove around 1-2 mercs per session. That would allow survivors to gain a couple of skills or even an Edge once per session.

Pulling this challenge off has been tricky. After two sessions, only 1 merc has died and the source has become obvious: Bennies. Rather than spending a Benny to re-roll a weak die, players are using them for soak rolls. As this is a playtest adventure and you never know what will happen until you try it, I decided to keep the Benny rates the same - each player starts with 3 per session. Not enough to give every merc a shot, just enough to leave one of them hanging out to dry. It turns out this has become a major kink in mercenary death/progression rates and a change had to be made.

What we decided on was to reload the Benny pool so that each player starts a new session with a number of Bennies equal to the number of dead mercs on their hands. If you start with all four of your mercs alive, you gain 0 Bennies. Down to the last one? Then you have 3 Bennies to start the session, just like a real character would provide.

I'm hoping to run the third session in a couple of weeks with the revised Bennies rule. Hopefully, that will do the trick and help get me back on par with my quota of character death (which is an odd thing for a GM to consider). Until then, I'm not sure if I want to share too much of the plot seeing as I may want to publish this adventure (as a stand-alone Savage Worlds thing or a unique addition to the Mercenary Breed setting) and will need to run a new playtest to ensure all revised rules work from the very beginning next time around. Guess there's only one way to find out.

You can read more about Mercenary Breed and Xenopedia from Mystical Throne Entertainment's website. 

Revealing the Mysteries of Asylum

I am the Warden!!

What a great weekend. After a little thing called my wedding - and thanks to everyone's congratulations over the weekend - there was some gaming to run at this season's LUG Con. While I was only able to run one game in particular, I'm very happy it was Asylum solely because it was finally getting a run at the table.

For those who may have missed it, Asylum is the game conceived and drafted during a single week for EN World's 7 Day RPG Creation contest thingy back in May of this year. While it didn't win any beauty pageants, the mechanics really stuck in my head and I've tweaked them since that time and gave it a run for its money on Sunday afternoon with the help of Brian and Jeff. They play convicts freshly delivered to the island known only as Asylum. Their neighbours? 198 other convicts who have started up the Contest in an effort to become the last living resident and win a ticket home. In other words, it's a bloody massacre in a can and I'm the can opener.

Have a peak for yourself and let it play in the background while you work. The mechanics are fairly simple (especially in contrast to my earlier work) and I'm very pleased with how this game turned out. If you want to skip the video and learn more about it, just check out this earlier post about Asylum.

A Playtesting Triad

I am the Warden and these are my new projects!!

With Killshot's ENnie safely escorted to its new home, perhaps it's time to start looking to the future. Again. Don't get me wrong, it's not the end of Killshot. My plan is to have Killshot Files #2 on virtual shelves within the next week or two, but there's more swirling around in my cranial vortex than assassins and bloody violence. There's espionage and bloody violence, storytelling and bloody violence, and quick-play action (with a chance of bloody violence). 

I have three concepts in various stages of assembly at the moment, each of them vying for top spot on the playtesting radar. Two of them should be no surprise to regulars, one is getting as close to an official announcement as can be made, and all three need to be tested. While I will most definitely have my award-winning Development Team try them out in various stages and at various times, these guys have regular lives and their own games in the works. That means I need to broaden my horizons privately before trying to go public with them. 

So here's what I'm looking for and doing so does not imply either of these projects will ever see the light of day (though Optional Core certainly gets preferential treatment because of its wide potential). Each of the three concepts is presented below in one paragraph to varying degrees of detail. If you see anything you like and want to playtest online, post a comment below and I'll add you to the list. 

Here we go. 

Using My Big Boy Words

I am the Warden!!

You'd think by my blog alone that there's very little action going on right now, but that's so far from the truth. Aside from the official announcement of Killshot Reloaded (see the BRG site for details) and the progression of development in the new edition, I've also been plugging away on a new Kickstarter video for the upcoming Shaintar campaign by Sean Patrick Fannon, finishing up the final piece for Killshot Files #2, putting the next instalment of High Plains Samurai together, and working on a silent project on the side. If I haven't been posting enough, it's because I'm writing too much.

And that's the irony of today's post. It came to me last month that perhaps I haven't been writing enough, particularly when it comes to adventure design. When I'm running a game, I'm a massive fan of improvising. I'll detail a basic plot, flesh and stat out characters, establish locations, and run with everything as it plays out to provide players with a rich and reactive setting.

The problem is the contradiction with what I really need for adventure design and publication. It's something discovered during the past couple of Killshot or Optional Core sessions that must be seriously and correctly addressed in the new edition. When you don't write down the entire adventure and plan out your fight scenes in advance, you tend to take liberties with your text. For example, it never occurred to me during any of the various drafts for the three jobs published in Killshot: Direction to include a sidebar or any relevant information on how to set up a Tracker for a given scene. There were rules for determining all the chips needed on the board and that seemed good enough. What I've noticed is that without having a solid foundation to set up a scene through the game's mechanics, there's no telling how good or poor the scene will play out. So much information is missing from the text that Directors will have to embellish as they see fit and that can cause serious problems in game satisfaction.

Perhaps no other evidence is required than the outcome of the first session for High Plains Samurai. While the YouTube broadcast was cut out early and remains unavailable to those outside of the Development Team sitting at the table, the last fight scene went horribly awry. Everything went wrong and the fact that I never bothered to write down a set-up for the fight scene contributed to that problem. And it didn't help that my qi points mechanic was totally screwed up.

For tomorrow's game, I've made adjustments and wrote out every fight scene (all five of them) in complete detail, from how many Teams are provided in what order to a list of pre-existing triggers and outcomes for the fight using the new fight management system undergoing construction for Reloaded. How will it turn out? You can find out tomorrow as we stream a live broadcast of the game through the Optional Core community on G+. 

Dice Conquers Love (Or The Other Way Round)

I am the Warden!!

I've been holding off on posting this since Tuesday afternoon when a particular playtest wrapped up for the day and it was time to get back to work. If you've been following me on Twitter, I've been teasing it and while it's likely not that hard to guess, the temptation to hold off on going public with it (or as far as posting for 20 people to read can be considered "going public") has been great... but not enough.

Tuesday morning, as I prepared to find my ass groove in my office chair, I was approached with a counteroffer by my fiancee, Chelsea. "If I were to play your game, could I be Mystique?" It's hard to remember every nuance of your reaction when you're in shock, but I'm sure I stopped, blinked several times as if I had an eyelash in my eye, and turned towards her with my tongue hanging out of my mouth.

"Uhh, yeah. Why, were you... thinking of playing?"

"Sure, but only if I get to play Mystique."