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. 

This Ain't Your Assassin's Game [Optional Core]

From the film, The Warrior's Way.

I am the Warden!!

This morning is spent hanging out in a McDonalds in Ottawa, of all places, while I'm waiting for the missus to write her admission exams for a (fingers crossed) spring college course. Laptop in hand, riding off the free wifi, and loving how things are so different for adults hanging out in public places than with teenagers.

After producing an intro trailer for High Plains Samurai and revisions to the Optional System character record, it's time to nail down some of the new rules and concepts for Friday's first foray into this mini-campaign/playtest. And it's become entirely clear how different a martial arts campaign is from Killshot.

Don't get me wrong, it's still the Optional System in every way, but there are some distinct differences between one and the other. Would you like to see a list? Some of these are direct quotes from the original documents I'm working on this morning.

Kick-Ass Villains

I am the Warden!!

Ever roleplayed on a train before? We did during the Shadoworld Excursion a couple of weeks ago. When I was younger, my concern for standing out and "looking weird" roleplaying in public would have prevented me from doing so, but now I just don't give a shit. Roleplaying games have done more for me than any stranger has and so my teenage compulsion has gone up in flames. Plus, it's fun to see people walk by and wonder just what the hell we're doing and why it's not being done on a phone.

On our ride to Moncton, my buddy Kurt and I played the finishing scenes of the Matrix: Revolutions playtest with slight modifications for a solo game. Save for one part: the final villain, a program known only as the Gimp. He was a giant man adorned in black leather and a kinky zippered mask concealing his identity, though this wasn't as apparent as the gargantuan meat tenderizer he carried with him. Oh, and he was immune to firearms. Bullets would hit him, but never harm him. I wanted to see how a long hero would fare against this bastard and was really hoping for a wild ride of devastation.

Nope. Part of this one-sided slashfest was Kurt's decision to pull out his twin samurai swords from moment one rather than shoot first as I had expected. The other part has lead me to consider new and dramatic additions to villains, the subject of today's post.

Say Hello to the Bad Guy!

I am the Warden!!

And I had to use that mixture of Scarface quotes. I had to! It was too perfect.

Usually on Mondays, I like to post the latest update to Optional: Playtest but there wasn't enough work put in last week to have anything significant for you. Lots of thinking, not a lot of writing. Instead, let's concentrate on that most crucial of challenges for any OS adventure: bad guys.

I've been playing around with some bad guys - various monsters, particularly orks - for the last few playtests and now the time has come to pull out a hammer and use the good nails on these suckers. While the formatting may be nothing to hand out awards for, it does the trick for what's required right now. (1 training point to whoever can guess which program I used to draft him up. Then lose 1 training point for being so cocky about it.)

Playtesting: The Stonehut Massacre

I am the Warden!!

I love playtesting. Correction: I especially love playtesting when everything works like magic. Our first regular OSRPG playtest went down on Friday and I could not be more pleased, not only because everything worked (for the most part, some things are still being tweaked) but everyone involved had loads of fun. We even had the unexpected benefit of introducing a non-gamer to RPGs on the same night and he found everything easy and disturbingly fun. (The fact that he had more ork guts spewed across his clothes was an indication of just how well the new guy did. Let that be a lesson to everyone out there - noobs can save the day.)

The Stonehut Massacre
Our story takes place in an unnamed world and continues to tell the plight of two watchers (think of rangers assigned to patrol the woods around their community) on the run from a legion of orks. Pushing their horses through the woods overnight, they came across a fortified stone hut belonging to an older human by the name of Jamus. With their wounds overpowering their urgency to reach the town of Haven, the two watchers took refuge in Jamus' home.