I haven’t done a damned thing all January (as it concerns GMing).

Got plenty of excuses, but it really just comes down to a lack of motivation, as always. The fire’s not out; the coals are still hot, though there’s no visible evidence. I figure it won’t take much to get it going again, but there it sits.

On the other (not-so-helpful) hand, this month marks the return of The Walking Dead from its winter hiatus, and that always gets me in a post-apocalyptic mood. Snippets of related conversation lead me to believe that a recurrence of the After the End campaign would likely not involve zombies, though—but that doesn’t bother me.

Obligatory New Year’s post 😛

My GMing projection for this year: cloudy but promising. I expect to run two campaigns this year, but exactly what (in one case) and, more importantly, when is difficult to say.

Work on the next Inception one-shot is progressing, and I’ve started putting some pieces together for the full campaign. I’m beginning the push for the players’ characters, which means getting some of the basic info organized. Much will depend on how the one-shot goes, but I feel pretty good about it.

There’s not much to report this month.

For the Olympus group, the Inception campaign preparations are still progressing forward; I’m down to the last bits before I start moving it to my website for public access. I’m still working on a new one-shot, which should see production in 6-8 weeks, at the end of the current campaign (though I’m having some trouble with the details on that one).

For the Core Group, it’s even farther out. We delayed the start of the continued Savage Tide campaign due to the usual end-of-year holiday madness—we’ve been playing a Savage Worlds Star Trek game in the interim—and I have no way of knowing when that will wrap. Already, it’s been long enough with no player push that the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign plans effectively lay dormant, and as it generally goes, may not rise again—depends on the players. Personally, I’d still rather run a reboot of After the End, no doubt, under new assumptions regarding the setting and tone. But we’ll see.

I’ve been pressing hard to complete my Inception mechanics to a sufficient degree since it was decided to turn it into a full-on campaign; I’m not quite finished, but good progress has been made—a couple of chunks that need attention before I consider it good enough to use. Research has meant watching the movie over and over—I’ve practically got it memorized now 😛 Once it’s finished (enough), I’ll be posting the mechanics on my website for availability to the public, though I expect I’ll continue to polish it over time. I decided to start preparing another Inception one-shot, specifically to playtest the mechanics; I don’t know when this will occur, but “this year” (what’s left of it) or near to it seems likely. The new one-shot is intended to use the actual campaign characters, and depending on the results it may be considered “canonical” to the actual campaign. A new consideration for this campaign is the addition of another player to the Olympus group, a total GURPS noob, taking us to 7+1—this has the potential to complicate matters, but we’ll see how the new guy settles in; as of this writing, he’s been a bit in-&-out of the game. I have also decided to do the session recaps on the Olympus blog, but keep the GM behind-the-scenes stuff here. Overall, I’m feeling pretty positive about it.

As I’m expecting the Inception game to see production first, before the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I haven’t done much work on the Temple campaign. Mostly it’s just organizing NPCs and converting monsters to GURPS—I could start without that if it came to it. I’m resisting the urge to switch to something else for the Core Group—too long “inactive” usually results in a non-starter; ultimately, it depends on the players, but I’d really like to take another stab at After the End.

On 9 Aug 2014 I ran a one-shot game for the Saturday (Olympus) group via Fantasy Grounds, the first screen-time for me since After the End. The Inception movie concept is very conducive to a traditional RPG party mechanic, allows a wide range of possible experiences and encourages creative thinking—in short, perfect for gaming. I had intended to run an Inception one-shot for a while, and had been prepping for it, and when the opportunity presented to run it, I went ahead and jumped into it. A number of players were going to be quite late to the game—the reason we weren’t playing the regular campaign that week—so I didn’t make a big push for finished characters beforehand (though I had intended to have some pre-generated characters ready, that didn’t quite happen), and used the first hour or so to deal with that stuff. With that in mind, and wanting to be certain to finish in one session, I wanted to keep it short and simple.

Regarding the Rules:
At its core, this would be a GURPS Action game, with the more-cinematic behaviors reserved for within the Dream; I would be using BAD pretty much as-is. GURPS already has a Dreaming skill, B188; I just used it. I took “mechanical” inspiration from Mage: The Ascension, and its official GURPS conversion; Dreaming would be the go-to skill for pretty much everything within the Dream, and could be used to “boost” actions. The basics:

• Roll against the higher of Will or Dreaming when you first enter the Dream; failure can result in some glitches, Crit Fail=Paradox. In addition, whenever you make a skill or attribute roll to interact with the environment or Projections in the Dream, use the lower of Dreaming and your attribute or skill.
• Architect has to fight against Subject’s influence; QC Dreaming vs Subject’s Dreaming or Will to prevent warping when Subject gets bored, frightened, etc. Affected by current BAD.
• Must hide/disguise changes to the Dream from the Subject; Fail=BAD+1 (MoF <5 allows a “save”), from increased attention/aggression. Doesn’t matter what the Projections see, but what the Subject detects (Projections react to the Subject’s observation)
• SK:Dreaming is always available as a Complementary Skill to any skill or attribute check within a Dream, and may provide a larger-than-normal bonus (or penalty): ±1 per 2 MoS/MoF (minimum ±1)

Also, I decided to use my normal Impulse Buys in the form of Planning Points (based on the planning rolls) and Architect Points (specific to the Architect, for setting up blockades and whatnot).

Regarding the Characters:
I recommended the use of Action 1 Template+Lens at the usual point levels (250/50/5). Characters would be already teamed up, or have worked together before. Required of All:

• Dreaming @12+ (higher is better—would be often penalized, and would be used heavily; think SK:Free-Fall in a zero-gravity mission)
• At least one Disadvantage would affect the Dream
• At least one Advantage would affect the Dream
• New Perk: Trademark Technique; +1 to Dreaming when using/activating the associated ability

Needed Character Archetypes:

• The Psychologist (a logical replacement for the “Saito” movie character)
• The Architect
• The Extractor (Grifter)
• The Chemist
• The Details-Man
• The Forger

Regarding the Mission:
Essentially, the mission revolved around an American-turned-jihadist captured in Afghanistan who needed to be interrogated to find out who his boss was, but due to legal restrictions couldn’t be interrogated in a more traditional manner, so the government organization turned to the “extractors,” whose influence would be otherwise undetectable. The Subject was a young college kid, recruited and brainwashed (given Extreme Fanaticism; -3 to attempts to mind-control or manipulate, which I applied to BAD). Being a one-shot game, I had the organization provide the team with a basic plan, so I could prepare the necessaries without having to consult the players directly: the kid was a regular first-person shooter player, so I used a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare map as the “maze,” and gave them the plan to lead the Subject through the map to a location where his “boss” would be waiting, faceless, for his subconscious mind to fill in the details of his face, after which, the team would be able to identify him from a book of mug-shots. I threw in some complications, like an interruption by the kid’s father, and used the Projections to demonstrate the kid’s programmed prejudices. Simply, the PCs would fight through a bunch of FPS shooters, the Subject’s Projections, and convince the Subject to take them to see the boss.

The Result:
We got off to a somewhat shaky start with the character creation, but the dust finally settled, and we ended up with a pretty solid team; very competent, due to the point-levels. I started them on the plane to Pakistan to do the job, a 19 hour flight, which gave them that time to do some basic research and plan the operation; they rolled extremely well, and ended up with a lot of points for Impulse Buys, of which they only ended up using a few. They all adopted FPS “clan” names associated with the Subject’s past activities. I threw them right into the fight, which went in the PCs’ favor, for the most part—I planned to do a little more fighting, but for the late start, I held back. They had a good social-engineering angle to start with, and the Subject followed along without any resistance. When they encountered the Subject’s father, they opened fire on him, and convinced the Subject to “cowboy up” (with a Critical Success) afterward. The Architect arranged for some rockets to hit the boss’ compound to punctuate the need to go in, and coaxed the Subject through his fears to confront him. While a few of the PCs remained outside to hold off the incoming Projections, the rest went in with the Subject and saw the face of the boss before he shot the Subject for his failure (for being captured; as he had feared), ending the Dream. One or two of the PCs had Eidetic Memory, and were easily able to ID the boss, and so the mission was completed, and they got paid.

The players enjoyed it enough, in spite of the “unfinished” nature of the mechanics, that they recommended it be taken on as a regular, ongoing campaign. So, I’ve begun working on refinements to the mechanics and preparing for a full-length treatment to occur, hopefully, in the not-too-distant future.

The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is moving right along. I still don’t have a definite start date, but I’m progressing as if it’s next in the queue (which may be true). I’ve made some Lego purchases for miniatures now, so I’m definitely “invested” in seeing this to production.

I’ve been mostly concerned with casting the Hommlet NPCs and organizing them; and getting to know them in the process. Ironically perhaps, I’ve found that while the campaign material does give quite a lot of detail on the town’s NPCs, it gives essentially nothing with regard to their operations. For example, it might say this guy over here is a spy, but it doesn’t say why he’s spying, or what he’ll do if something interesting happens. I suppose the designers intended the GM to be responsible for that sort of thing, but I think a little direction would have made sense. That said, my plan to make up for that shortfall is to use a combination of the Story Forge cards for the town-based meta-plot, and tarot for the rest—I’ve had a good experience with both, and I think it will work out. I’m planning to work in some interactions with personalities outside the town itself, to give it a feel of being a small part of a larger world.

There are a few other minor systems I need to work out, like weather—random or reality-based? Minor enough I don’t really need to be bothered about them right now.

I have done a fair bit of research and work on the CP wagering system, the preliminary results of which will be posted in the near-future here. I will probably be posting some of the Non-Player Groups here and there, as I find myself satisfied they aren’t likely to change.

Things change…we all know that, I’m sure.

The Terra Nova campaign took too long to spin up, and interest wasn’t as strong as it needed to be, so it fizzled. It occurs.

After some wrangling, the Friday (Core Group) group is pretty much settled on my next offering there: I’ll be running the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in GURPS. Essentially, Dungeon Fantasy. The plan is to play low-level characters (75pts is being discussed for starters) with full harsh-realism settings in force—we’re expecting deaths. I’m planning to use a new meta-system to allow proposition wagering of unused character points on things like “who dies first,” etc.; I’ve been studying up on how sports betting works so I can do it right. This dungeon has a reputation for being difficult to survive, of course, and not a lot of opportunity for the usual role-playing, so I’m considering this an “experiment”—it could be incredibly annoying or wildly amusing. I’ll be posting whatever information I can in preparation for the first run as soon as I have it.

For the Saturday (Olympus) group, the current plan is still to pick up The Crusade where it left off. The group makeup has changed considerably since it first ran, and I’m pushing for character concepts from the new guys, at which point I will know more about when the campaign will occur. I really liked this campaign, and I’m looking forward to a recurrence (for once 😛 ), but time is always my enemy in these matters. I do have a unique problem with this one, though: where do I post the play-logging? Olympus has its own blog, so I haven’t decided whether it would be best to do the writeups here and link to them there, or vice versa. But I can work that out later.

For those blessed few that are paying attention…

After the End is not currently being considered for renewal (though there is some potential of picking it up with my online/Saturday group). My next campaign is intended to be Terra Nova, and is deep into the laborious process of pre-prep. It’s one I’ve really wanted to do for a while now; the show was a brilliant concept, poorly executed, but a gold-mine for gaming potential—we’ll see how it turns out. It will likely be several months before it sees production, as the group has other campaigns currently running, but I will start posting some basic info as the time approaches.