Stream

GM Confidence: 4.5/5. I’d say this session went about as well as I could reasonably expect, especially given the struggle it required to see production.

In Between

As I was processing what the PCs might do in the wake of the last session, I realized I had absolutely no idea what one might do with “the doctor” in a situation like this. There’s no way off the ship. There’s nowhere to hide, really. The best I could come up with was to relocate him to a room the bad guys had already “processed,” hoping they wouldn’t return to re-check. I was prepared to have the wife suggest this, if needed; fortunately, the players arrived at more-or-less the same idea on their own.

Carrying on with the “railroading” I mentioned last time: I knew that what they’d really want is to go after the helicopter (which turned out to be correct). I knew where I wanted to send the PCs. I wasn’t able to come up with a better plan to get them there other than to rely on the players to “play along”—something I normally do not in any way recommend (but this campaign is a particular exception). So, I left a suggestion (via radio) that the helicopter was “unimportant,” and used the NPC, Bob, to leave a clue pointing toward the theater. Weak, but sufficient for them to pick up on the not-so-subtle direction, which, thankfully, they followed.

The Rescue

Especially in the early years, as I have often lamented, attendance problems were the bane of my GM existence. One of the ways I’ve learned to cope is the cunning use of narrative devices that “allow” for a player’s untimely absence within the story. In this case, I announced to the players during the Session Zero that the character of anyone who missed a session would be unceremoniously captured by the enemy as “punishment” (tongue-in-cheek of course).

I have to admit that, naïvely, I didn’t actually think it would happen. But, in this session, it did. So, how to work that into the narrative? I ultimately decided “simple is best”: have the PCs stumble across him in-transit, and he has no memory of how he got into that position. I really wanted the PCs to be taking the elevator down, so I could have the comedic doors-open-surprise-reveal, but I had to settle for second-best. The fight itself wasn’t meant to last long, and it didn’t—a testament to the potential lethality of a “focused” 250CP character group.

Off-screen, Mayhem picked up an Idiot Ball and got knocked on the head, drugged, and dragged off. Once back in play, his “punishment” consisted of the tipsy condition (B428), which I kept forgetting about, and a little “wandering damage.”

The Theater

I’ve been gradually increasing the number of opponents in the set-piece fights, feeling out the right balance. In this instance, though, I wanted to give them the opportunity to reach out from the shadows a bit—a proper Mook Horror Show. I’m also still trying to figure out how to make this “Quick Time” idea work, and this was an ideal spot for it. Unfortunately to that end, due to a combination of miscommunication and impulsiveness, Mayhem’s player “went loud” ahead of schedule, and we went into regular Combat Time instead. The PCs were outnumbered 2:1, but I had expected half of those to be eliminated before combat-proper began. I had another four waiting in the back-rooms in case they were a little too successful at the start—they weren’t needed. Even with their numbers and armaments, they were apparently at a significant disadvantage. That 2:1 fight took around an hour and twenty minutes—not bad, actually.

I finally got a “proper” cliffhanger. The idea came at the last minute, as they often do. But this one is going to lock me into a particular narrative direction for next week. All good.

Miscellaneous

• Fantasy Grounds did a big update, which wrecked parts of the GURPS skin, so I had to spend prep-time fixing things; the new 3D-map feature is not something I expect to use, but then I said the same of the animated maps, so we’ll see…
• I’ve been using BAD (Action2 p.4) more than previous games of mine; it occurred to me that using BAD “Universe Reaction” rolls made sense, so I implemented that here for the first time
• Wagering was under-used again; it may take some time for folk to get used to the idea—probably just after the last session 😛
• I realized the day after that I missed an opportunity in not casting Chris Tucker in the “magician” role—that would have been perfect 😛
• I had lampshaded the “doves” in the first session—a John Woo homage. This won’t be the last time.
• The boss, and the two mini-bosses have now been (mostly) introduced

Stream

GM Confidence: 4.5/5. This session went way better than the last one. There were some rough edges, as usual, but nothing disastrous. Due to the “simplified” nature of this run, there’s actually not a lot to talk about when things go smoothly.

What Went Right

The nature of this campaign means the connecting tissue of the story is less than important. I decided that “railroading,” which I normally take pains to avoid, is a perfectly acceptable motivational mechanism in this case. I used the “radio” to get the PCs to the first fight of the two, and the “doctor” to get them to the next one—a simple, logical progression. And I don’t feel bad about it 😛

Two fights in one session is tricky; a single fight can take up most of a four-hour session sometimes. For one, I had fewer PCs for this session, which would make it a little faster. For two, I intended the first fight to be extra short, so I put the PCs in a position where they could get the jump on the bad guys. As such, I didn’t really plan for a midpoint-twist or anything flashy. It partially worked, though it took a bit longer than I intended. I planned to do it “mapless” but reflexively ended up using one anyway—a mistake that probably dragged things out longer than needed. The second fight was the intended set-piece for the session, but ended a little shorter—which actually worked out. In both cases, that one round of Do Nothing, due to Partial Surprise, was a killer for the bad guys, and could easily have been much worse if they didn’t have Combat Reflexes.

What Went…Weird

The lead-in to the first fight was a little clunky, once again, due to the not-quite combat timing—I really need a better solution for this. I fault myself for not putting in the work (by design) and really thinking through the narrative flow. I was better prepared for the second, at least.

The players surprised me in both cases. I hadn’t considered making a Molotov Cocktail at all—bad GM! I hadn’t expected Shredder’s player to “test the boundaries” by trying to hit all three bad guys at the bar at once, and it resulted in some rules mistakes. (I nailed it down later for future reference: Rapid Strike and Dual-Weapon Attack can not be combined, and Rapid Strike is not allowed for a Move and Attack.) Then there was Shredder’s “Crotch-of-Death” flying-scissors attack at the end, which I had no idea how to adjudicate at that moment. Fortunately, another player was handy with the lookups while I was trying to sort these things out, and came up with some answers I could use. I look forward to creative solutions, though I wish I were better prepared sometimes. That’s GMing.

Miscellaneous

• The capture-team at the bar in the first fight should have approached “deceptively,” leaning on their supposed authority with these “random guests,” rather than approaching guns-out—this would have changed the flavor of the situation somewhat
• I couldn’t quite formulate the words at the time, but: I know the cabins can be “deadlocked” from inside, and I suspect they can be unlocked as such from the outside (would be dangerous otherwise), but being able to lock it from the outside, such that the occupants couldn’t open it from the inside, is highly unlikely IRL—but this is cinematic!
• Shredder’s slide-door at the cabin should probably have been too heavy to manipulate like that IRL—but this is cinematic!
• I decided, in the moment, that Shredder’s door “opponent” would use All-Out Attack to kick the door back. It was somewhat logical given he had the door as cover, and needed the extra assurance it would hit. But the use of All-Out has always been a little weird—bad guys should make mistakes, but as a GM who is also a player much of the time, it’s hard to “let go”

Stream

GM Confidence: 3.5/5. Some good. Some bad. I would say it was a disappointingly sloppy start, but not an utter failure.

Pregame

For a campaign designed specifically to reduce my usual workload, it certainly involved a lot of prep-work. Fortunately, a lot of that was up-front, and I won’t have to do it again, excepting some cleanup here and there. As usual, I was scrambling up to the last minute, getting graphics together and re-writing notes. On top of that, we got off to a really late start due to some scheduling issues, and we ran late to compensate, which may have turned out to be somewhat of a mistake. But we did get in a couple of practice combat sessions with the characters (in their unfinished state) in the weeks leading up, which smoothed things out a bit when the fighting started.

The First Half

The first half or so was all setup. This is typical. Aside from the obvious purpose of orienting the players, it gives me a chance to re-acclimate myself to my role—I tend to go for rather long periods, sometimes years, between runs. That part went well enough.

I expected that the “unusual” concept, the wagering of Bennies, would garner less than full participation, and that was the case. But one bet was placed, at least, and paid out in hilarious fashion. I expect that, for the next session, there will be a little more activity to that end, now that they’ve seen it work. But it would help to put some more ideas out there, and I need to pre-plan the odds for some likely scenarios. I decided at the last minute not to give out a free Benny “for wagering purposes only”—I didn’t feel like it would really help. So far, so good.

The Second Half

When we finally got to the meat-and-potatoes of the evening’s entertainment is the time when it all started to unravel.

For starters, I didn’t think through the lead-in well enough. As a result, the timing got a little weird: Is this combat-turns or not? How much time has passed? How far did they move? At least there are two PCs with Impulsive who made predicting their responses fairly easy, so I didn’t have to twist their arms to get them involved.

The real problem was the map, or lack thereof. I was starting to realize my error while I was dealing with the aforementioned “timing” issues. This was the one set-piece fight I could guarantee would occur, and I knew that from a very early stage. I had been thinking, for the months leading up, that I really needed to scrutinize the intended combat area and figure out what I needed to do with the mapping. I didn’t. I’m not sure why. It turned out I also could have benefited from having some additional images of the scene on hand, to give the players a better understanding of the geography—I had plenty. This mistake resulted in a last-minute, half-assed attempt to paint the picture well enough the players could understand. I suppose the attempt succeeded well enough, but it could—should—have been much better.

The fight itself actually went pretty well, overall. But since we’d run late, I had to wrap things in a spot I hadn’t intended, and with my brain somehow addled by the late hour (I guess?), I just couldn’t process how to close it out properly, and made a right mess of it. Honestly, I should’ve taken a short break before closing it out, to give my brain a chance to catch up.

Even so, it wasn’t all bad. Here are some highlights:

• I was really happy with how the characters turned out; there is enough variation to set them apart, and it was fun to watch them do their thing—they each got their chance to shine. I did notice how they managed to cover for each other without really “planning” to—good teamwork.
• I finally got that “proper” use of Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, and it actually went pretty smoothly, no doubt, due to the test-fights we did on previous nights.
• They went through quite a few Bennies in this one; that might come back to bite them as the BAD gets higher.
• I put the last bad guy in the lifeboat overhead as a midpoint twist, which was fine, but I really didn’t think through when he should appear, so he showed up a bit late.
• There was only one instance of a player throwing the “this is supposed to be cinematic!” flag; better than I expected 😛
• The players seemed to like the Achievements. I’ve got over a dozen currently lined up, most of which I have graphics for. I’ll add more as I think of them (assuming I have the brain-cycles to spare).

History

As was stated numerous times with regard to my previous run of Sea Dogs, my workload at work over the last year or two has increased uncomfortably, to the detriment of my ability to effectively run a “normal” RPG campaign. This remains the case, though maybe I’m in a bit of a very-welcome lull at the moment. But GMing is a part of me that I can’t quite turn off, and we’re a bit short on GMs at the moment. So, I needed something I could reliably manage in this hostile environment—the less “work” required, the better. I tossed around a couple of ideas for a while. But while I was on a cruise vacation at the end of October ’23—first time since before the Plague of 2020—I came up with the idea of having some terrorists attempt a takeover of a cruise ship, and loose some fully-cinematic Action PCs upon them in that enclosed environment. It’s about as simple as you can get: create some generic bad-guys, and some set-piece fights, loosely-connected with some basic plot stuff that doesn’t really matter—no need for it to “make sense.” As close to perfect as I could hope for, I think.

Campaign Overview

Basics

“Keep It simple!” Basically, it’s an ’80s/’90s action movie in a modern setting (I toyed around with making it a “period piece”). Die Hard on a Cruise Ship. I’m shooting for True Lies level of cinematicness—still kinda ridiculous, but somewhat more “grounded” than its ’80s forebears. Owing to some lessons learned last run, I’m going to make this a short one—I’m planning for six sessions, though it could easily go a little long without too much additional stress. The plan is to do around one hour of in-game time passage per session, so the whole thing will take place within six-or-so hours.

Through a combination of Discord and a Session Zero, the players and I agreed on the parameters and rules to be used (or excluded). We settled on the name, Redacted 3. The PCs would be a group of former quasi-governmental assassins now in various stages of retirement, temporarily reassembled to honor their fallen, beloved mentor, by scattering his ashes on the sea, while on an otherwise-real cruise vacation. The events of the previous “movies” (Redacted 1 and 2 don’t actually exist 😛 ) and any other of their former associations are a Noodle Incident. The bad guys are going to be typical, generic Islamic terrorists—I’m ripping off the Crimson Jihad from True Lies as if those events “actually” happened 20 years ago.

Characters

The PCs were all generated using the standard Action templates, with the usual tweaking; they come with all the included cinematic abilities that are going to make it really hard to take them down—which is fine. Restrictions were placed on the availability of Disadvantages, understandably, to make sense within the short in-game timeframe and single-location. They will each be known only by their codenames (with one exception), which are taken from ’70s/’80s/’90s cartoon villains. They will be starting with no gear whatsoever—they’re on vacation, not a mission—and wealth will be irrelevant; weapons will need to be taken from the enemy or the environment.

Rules and Experiments

• We’ll use Tactical Combat with the usual attention to detail; that is, not 100% strictly observed—maybe 75%-85%.
• The overall “cinematic” level I’m intending is not one I’ve had to adjudicate before, with the very-brief exception of the Knight City one-shots. I expect I will have to be reminded from time to time to let things slide.
• Basic Abstract Difficulty (BAD; from Action 2 Exploits) will be used throughout. The plan is to start at zero for the first session and increase by one-per-session—probably capped at 4 (situationally or globally—or a bit of both).
• This campaign will make full use of Fantastic Dungeon Grappling. This won’t be the first of my campaigns to officially feature FDG, but it may be the first where it actually gets used—at least for the first engagement (given the PCs’ lack of equipment).
• Bennies are once again making an appearance in this campaign. I’ve been pretty happy with how they’ve worked out so far.
• Given the in-game timeframe, spending character points for advancement seems a little weird. We’re going to defer CP awards until the end of the run, but I’m planning to give out per-session Bennies instead. That said, we’ve recently “discovered” the rule on B292 regarding the “IQ roll to see whether you learned from your experience” after using a skill at default—I’ll allow the borrowing of CPs from the end of the run in these cases.
• Another consequence of the in-game timeframe is “healing”: that is, healing probably isn’t going to happen much, so they may be stuck with injuries for the duration. This is totally in keeping with the source material, of course. But with the PCs’ abilities, and the use of Bennies, I expect this won’t be such a big deal.
• Meta Experiment: I’m going to be allowing the wagering of Bennies, versus the “house” or between individuals—for things like “who gets injured first,” or “who gets the first crit roll,” and the like. It’s actually not a new idea for me, but this will be the first time it will see production. Whether or not the players actually do make use of it is another matter, and will tell me how viable this sort of thing might be in the future. If it goes well, it may warrant a future blog post regarding the details; if it doesn’t, I’ll probably forget it ever happened 😛
• Meta Experiment: Achievements—I’ve got a bunch in mind, a few of which I’ll inform the players of beforehand, with the rest kept secret. The idea is to give a Benny any time someone triggers one.

In Closing (or Opening?)

If this ends up fitting my workload the way I intend, I expect a sequel or two in the future—optimistic as it is to say at this point. Worst-case: We get some interesting and/or entertaining fights in, and learn some stuff in the process. I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.