One-Shot at History: Post-Mortem

This past Saturday, my one-shot went off and was, when it comes down to brass tacks, successful. The group had a good time. I introduced some players to one of my favorite systems. Dice were rolled. Mooks were mashed. All-in-all, yes. I'd call that a success. As I often do after a game session, I've spent plenty of time fretting and analyzing what went down and what worked in order to make the next one just that much better. There's a couple of points that kind of stick out in my mind, if anyone is interested.

Critical Thinking

Problem-solving is a basic intellectual skill. When presented with a goal and a set of obstacles, creative methods of problem-solving are sometimes required where simple methodology fails. By reputation, gamers in general exhibit a certain degree of creative thought bordering on ludicrous in regards to hypothetical scenarios. At least this is what I've come to believe and expect. I've heard tales of players going to outrageous lengths to surmount various stumbling blocks to mixed degrees of success. Examples range from launching arrows at pavilion-like structures before ascertaining breed or disposition to conquering dungeons by simply digging around them to constructing Rube Goldburg inspired contraptions in ad hoc attempts to open unlocked doors without touching them. 

The critical thinking involved in these kinds of exploits (the successful ones at least) is one skill I feel I could and should develop further. Tabletop games often present opportunities to do so in a fun and creative environment, so what better way to practice than to pull a heist? That's right. I'm talking Shadowrun.

One-Shot at History

As I type this, I find myself in the midst of preparations for a one-shot: a single session game to entertain our group of miscreants for a single evening while our current GM conjures up the next branch of our main campaign. I'll be running a pre-written scenario and I had to ask the question of whether or not the PCs would be built by the players or pre-made by myself. For the most part, the players will get to make their own barring one or two people new to the system I'm using. This leads me to yet another question: If I'm going to make a character for another player, do I need to hand him a background for that character? Or more importantly, if the scenario is pre-written and it's only one session, does the background material really matter?

GenCon 2013

Just got home from Gen Con, Indy: The Best Four Days in Gaming. Probably one of the biggest gatherings of gamers in the world. This was my third trip to this magnificent convention and, despite some tragedy, I really enjoyed myself. If you haven't yet had the opportunity, it's a tremendous place to experience an awful lot of things and the city itself is very welcoming for this particular event. 

Drop Dead Simple

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” 

― Leonardo da Vinci

I have within the last twenty four hours acquired and played Vanillaware's latest endeavor, Dragon's Crown. It's a side-scrolling beat-em-up very much inspired by Capcom's Dungeons and Dragons arcade games: Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara. At about five hours into it, I can say I'm having a blast! It's even got me thinking of campaigns and my next turn at GMing again.

The premise is rather simple. A group of adventurers goes from dungeon to dungeon in search of the mythical Dragon's Crown, aka: the McGuffin. Sounds like a basic campaign to me. The details of the plot and all related events are a thinly woven excuse to get you from scene to scene. Still sounds like a campaign to me. Go from dungeon to dungeon, killing things and taking their stuff. Alright, it's an extremely basic campaign. That can still be fun, right? Let's analyze it a bit.

Make It Stronger

Recently, my Saturday group ended up in a rather interesting scenario: our GM humored me in designing an encounter for him to run. I gave him the bare-bones concept and some points of interest and he filled in the blanks and turned it into a really good session. Being an artist who is his own worst critic, I've already started looking at how I could have improved it. I'm not saying that our GM did a bad job. In fact he did incredibly well. On the other hand, I'm more looking at how he or I might improve our skills for the next time.

I can't emphasize this enough here, this is not for bragging rights or to belittle anything. This is entirely for analytical purposes. I want to turn a good scenario into a great scenario, not to reduce what was done. In picking this thing apart, you might find something you may use for your own game.

Good Question

Saturday's campaign, using the HERO System, our GM asked a very interesting question: How do I make it scary when you can hit everything?

Let's add some context. We have the latest chapter of an ongoing campaign with a major horror theme attached to it. Basically, anime-themed supernatural cops versus eldritch abominations. Admittedly, I went a little overboard conceptually, and made a character that was a tad on the broken side in combat. It's ridiculously hard for her to miss a shot. I've been doing my best to try to balance things out, going so far as to create opportunities for the GM to mess with her and not using everything she has at her disposal. Barring that little oversight, though, it is a good question to ask.