High Plains Samurai, Act One Recap [Optional Core]

I am the Warden!!

On Friday night, the Development Team got down to business and we started up Act One of High Plains Samurai, our playtest campaign for Optional Core. Quick summary? It was excellent right up until the end when the players cashed in all their qi to defeat 2 villains in one fell swoop. While I'm sure it felt awesome for the players, it demonstrated a major flaw in combat design.

There's plenty more to talk about, but first let's get started with some videos. You can catch the first four hours of our exploits (and now we know there is a four-hour time limit on all Hangout broadcasts) here on YouTube.

And for a clearer version of the HPS intro movie...

Ironically enough, the majority of problems happened after the broadcast cut out. The fight between Spider (a wanted fugitive sought out by Fraser's hero, Maoser) and Black Scorpion/Kiki were drastically different. While there's still loads of review and recapping ahead before I can create a concrete list of revisions and new material for next month's game, here's what I have so far. 

Longevity

I am the Warden!!

A lot of people don't know this but I'm a film school dropout. One year at Humber College in Toronto and a large majority of it was theoretical, not practical. We learned what all the equipment is for, what is does, and how it does it but those suckers were smudge free as far as first year students went. Since those days, my interest in filmmaking remains though I keep it to a casual hobby rather than striving to break into the movies.

I've been using movies in my games for near on 5 years, right around the time I purchased my iBook G4 laptop and it came with the free version of iMovie. Actually, I was doing it for a year or two before that with whatever "program" I had on my PC. Opening credits, title sequences, scrolling text, and flashes of artwork set to music. They've been an incredibly effective way to setting the mood and getting players right back into the action without the bore of reading text aloud. With the Optional System, I'm looking to take this a bit further and turn these sequences into an aspect of the game.