Fallout Denver Session Notes 1: Wherein our heroes do something heroic for the first time in their lives.

War, war never changes. In the fires that consumed the old world, the American authorities sought refuge in Vaultec's master control vault in Cheyenne Mt. Their flight from what is now the Capitol Wasteland led a trail of destruction from the east coast straight into the heart of Colorado. Their escape was pinned down in Denver, and the full fury of the atomic war machine unleashed its devastating power. Control-group vaults in the area were prompted to play a pre-recorded message, urging inhabitants to wait for representatives of Vaultec to let them know that the fallout had passed. Yours was one such vault. Sealed against time, and damaged by an atomic force beyond all projections, your forebears waited. Thirty years ago, a group at the door was welcomed with eager expectation, and a vicious gang known as the Angels was admitted to Vault 4. The vault has become a crime empire, built on the backs of slaves: built on your backs. The vault dwellers toil on, making  the gang's drugs and weapons, and continue their long dream of daylight. 

This marked the beginning of our painfully non-canon game in the ruins of old Denver. I'm running this game in the GURPS system, and the first session spent a lot of time in character creation, as they tend to do. Character creation gave us three characters for adventures in the wastes:

Chance: A vault dweller entrusted as an Angels enforcer. He is a strong melee fighter with a careless attitude.

Gadget: A vault dweller assigned to work the weapons repair and reloading benches. She has a natural aptitude for machines and technology that surpasses many of her peers. 

Remington: A vault dweller with little known about him. He tends to keep his head down and seems able to slip away unseen as he likes. 

These three had only just acclimatized to the world when the rebellion broke out. Remington used a stealth-boy like mutation to fade against the walls and see what was happening. Gadget immediately took a gun from near the repair station and palmed it until she could get a feel for the situation. Chance, on the other hand, was front and center when the drug lab exploded in a cloud of flaming gas. Drug mixers in masks stormed out of the lab with makeshift shields crafted from surgical trays and began raining chemically enhanced molotov cocktails down from the railing onto the common areas below. 

Above, on the approach to the overseer's office, the Angel's members had beat a hasty retreat and barricaded themselves into the area. Chance fought his way to the top of the staircase with the drug mixers in tow and began to engulf the room in flames, while fighting through those same flames. All the while he was shouting, "We have to do this, for glory!"

The fighting pushed back down the stairs, now slick with flaming oil, and, in the scuffle, Gadget and Remington made it up to join in the fighting. The local representative of the Angels barricaded himself in the overseer's office, and, after goading him out to the railing to try to calm the vault dwellers, the party watched as the vault dwellers grabbed him and flung him from the railing. In the aftermath of all of this, Chance made it to the overseer's office and tore open a locker. "What's that?" someone asked. 

"This," he replied, lighting up the shish-kebab (flaming sword) in his hand, "is Glory."

As the vault settled back down, and recriminations died in the exultation of freedom, troubling facts were brought to light. The lower levels of the vault had been becoming increasingly more irradiated over the years, due to damage sustained in the blast. The vault dwellers would need new homes, and soon. It was decided that these three should take the Angels' radiation suits that had been left in the vault and set out in search of a new home for the people of Vault 4. They assembled in the front room and watched as the vault door opened, to allow them to step outside for the first time. 

. . .and that is where the first session ended. I've tried to remember events accurately, but if any of my players are reading this, I won't claim any better than "did my best". We'll pick up at session two next time I decide to write one of these. Happy gaming, all. 

Divided Loyalties: How to be good at being lawful good.

Hey all,

This is something I've been wanting to talk about here for a while. The alternate title for this article would be: "How not to be lawful stupid".

For anyone unfamiliar, lawful good is one segment of the classic dungeons and dragons alignment chart. The chart uses two spectrums to help define characters' motivations and goals. The two axes are Good-Neutral-Evil, and Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic. These two spectrums create nine individual alignments. I'll do a brief run-down of them, and them go into the main thrust of this article:

Chaotic Evil: a self-seeking force of chaos, like the Joker.

Neutral Evil: self-seeking above all else. Willing to use or break laws as suits them.

Lawful Evil: a loyal devotee of evil establishments.

Chaotic Neutral: anti-establishment for the sake of being anti-establishment. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité"

True Neutral: This might be the most difficult alignment to get a handle on. Some players use it to remain aloof and uninvolved in the world, as the Brotherhood of Steel would. Some build characters who view good and evil as human constructs, best kept in strict balance in the world, in a form of pseudo-eastern mysticism. Still others, use this to refer to simple, honest folk, unlikely to join the militia, and even more unlikely to be the threat that makes a militia necessary. Rest assured, I plan to come back and talk about True Neutral characters once I finally get a handle on them myself.

Lawful Neutral: law above all else. "My hands are tied.", "The Prime Directive is not a suggestion." etc.

Chaotic Good: freedom fighters and vigilantes. The law is either too corrupt or too incompetent for good men to follow blindly.

Neutral Good: do the right thing. Act with compassion, and strive for harmony.

Lawful Good: and now, we come to the crux of this article. Most players see lawful good characters as absolute paragons who never need to stop and think in order to do the right thing. I'd like, however, to propose a different read on these characters.

Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil
This boils down to drawing a line between what is lawful and what is right. Perhaps a character believes that it is never right to take a life, but that in some circumstances, it is the lesser of two evils. This phrase in particular can do a lot to define the lawful good character. "The Lesser of Two Evils."

C.S. Lewis once said: "Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good." For the lawful good character, every necessary evil weighs heavily on the soul. When the character must choose between saving one and saving two, they will save two, and live on, haunted by the one they abandoned to lethal fate.

Bad Government is Better than No Government
For the lawful good character, the law is right. More men, women, and children are made safe by the rule of law than by any actions of a single heroic individual. The character must weigh the rule of law against their own desire to do right when the law is wrong.

Every act of vigilantism weakens the edifice of government, yet not every government rules as it ought. If the king's guard takes bribes with the king's knowledge and consent, yet the presence of the guard saves lives from the tribal marauders; how much can one really do about the bribery?

Loyalty is Ethical, even Loyalty to the Unethical
For the lawful good character, loyalty is a high calling. To be loyal is to be moral. Yet, the authorities demanding loyalty may require acts of loyalty that are wrong for the common people.This leads into the last point.

Obey the Liege Lord and Serve the People
The royals rule by divine right. It is fitting that they should rule, and yet, their rule is often unsuited to the good of the common people. For the lawful character, the will of the authorities is supreme; but for the good character the good of the common people commands the highest loyalty. It is here that we have the central conflict of the lawful good character. For this character, his loyalties are divided. You cannot please everyone, and for the lawful good character, this impossibility can become a consuming guilt.



For more on complex, lawful good characters, I highly recommend the Sano Ichiro novels by Laura Joh Rowland. The first in the series is called Shinju. These are the best books I've ever read at dealing with the internal character drama of the lawful good character, and I'd go so far as to call it a must-read for anyone who plays tabletop games and thinks lawful good characters are "bad" or "boring".

Happy gaming, all.

A Boycott that Works

Hey all,

I'll be going on a more serious note today. Some of you may already be aware that some stores will be opening on Thanksgiving this year. This kind of thing is unpopular among many who think store employees should get the day with their families, as well as Black Friday shoppers who feel pressured to cut their own Thanksgivings short in order to get the best deals.

This general disillusionment with American consumer culture slipping back into the Thanksgiving festivities leads some to suggest mass boycotts of businesses doing this until they change their policies.

Let's be real, this is very lofty for many of us. A boycott on this scale, and lasting indefinitely can become so daunting that participants drop out after a very short time.

I have another suggestion.

The difficulty in this boycott is a lack of a specific goal. Black Friday is predicated on sales for Christmas shoppers. You may see where I'm going with this. If you want to do something to work for change, the boycott doesn't need to last until promises of change are made, it only needs to last thirty-two days. From November 24 until December 26, stick to the boycott if you care about this particular issue. This is a short-term goal with a dramatic effect on as business's bottom line. Losing Christmas sales can cripple a franchise, and a message sent this directly may have a chance to change ideas and policies.

Join me this year, just do your best. It doesn't have to be perfect to be effective.

We can change things.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Easy Thanksgiving Treats

Hey all,

I thought I'd move away from my normal style and share a handful of my favorite really easy Thanksgiving treats with you. Some of us have big dinners coming up, and may not always know what to bring for things like this. So, try one of these to make things quick and easy, and hopefully let you make a good showing at the family table.

First off, let's make Haystacks. These have got to be one of the easiest treats ever.

• A bag of dried, crispy Chow Mein noodles
• A bag of butterscotch chips (like chocolate chips, just the butterscotch kind)

Melt the butterscotch chips in the microwave, mix in the chow mein noodles, spoon into little piles and let them harden. When I say "little" piles, take that seriously. I made these way too big the first time I tried this. Also, you might feel like you need to add something like shortening or butter, but that just separates and leaves the haystacks in little puddles.

The next best one I know goes over really well is Muddy Buddies. This is a copyrighted recipe, as far as I know, so I'll just link to Chex's official website here. The big thing is to decide what you want to call them. Some people say Muddy Buddies, some say Puppy Chow, and some just call it Crack.

Another couple that anyone can make, but that, for legal reasons, I should probably just link to are, Dream Pie, and Rice Krispie Treats.

With Dream Pies in particular a few small details can really make you look like you really know what you're doing. When filling the crust, you can fill it halfway before putting in a layer of extra ingredient: like banana slices or oreos, before finishing filling the crust.

If you decide to go for a cookies'n cream, it's my experience that cheesecake flavored pudding with crushed oreo makes that flavor come through best.

You can also layer different puddings, like making one package's worth of chocolate pudding, and another of banana and layering them into the crust with that layer of banana in between.

So, hopefully something in here gives you an idea that might shake off the hectic "What do I bring" moments of wanting to contribute to a family get together.

Happy dining, all.

GM's corner: "Alright, how do you want to do this?"

Hey all,

I thought today I'd share a quick and easy gamemastering tip I've picked up in the last year. I can't remember which of my GM's first used this, or where they said they got it from, but it's a great way to encourage involvement and engagement at the table. I know it as "Alright, how do you want to do this?", and to explain it, I'll need to go a little bit into something called stunting.

Again, as far as stunting goes, I'm not sure where the term in this context originated, and I'm not sure when the concept became an aspect of roleplaying games. Basically, stunting is including cinematic details in combat descriptions. "I roll to hit" is not stunting, "I lift the sword, two-handed over my crippled foe, and grin as I drive it into him." is stunting.

Like I said, I'm not sure who first used the term stunting to refer to this aspect of play, and I'm not even really sure when this went from the expectation at the table to being nothing but an alternative to tactics-based "roll"-play. That-is, a night of "I move five squares to here, and activate this feat, then I'll roll to hit". Basically, when the dice results outweigh the storytelling, that's what you'd call "roll"-play.

There are many gamemaster techniques for encouraging stunting. Some are easily exploitable in ways that can bog down play, such as giving bonuses to rolls on checks you've stunted. That is, if every time a player does anything, they get a mechanical bonus for stopping to describe in flowery detail whatever they're doing. Some are hard to keep honest with, such as giving bonus xp at the end of the session for good stunting, and overall, there's few good ways to make stunting anything more than an option for players feeling the creative writing/theater itch.

That said, this technique, which I've been privileged to see in action, can do wonders for a game. What it is, is an expectation in the players that the GM will not say "you killed it" or "it died". Instead, after you've dealt lethal damage to a creature, the GM will pause, look at you, and say, "Alright, how do you want to do this?" What this means is, "How would you like to stunt the death of this enemy."

What this does, in a mechanical sense, is nothing. The creature that would die, still dies, and there's an understanding at the table that this type of stunting cannot draw other enemies into the attack, or gain any kind of mechanical advantage. What's more, the players get to add a bit of flavor to their characters and to the world being built. How this type of creature dies, and what can kill it, are, in most cases, not important worldbuilding elements to the GM's story.

Simply put, this is a technique to get your players more invested in the narrative elements of play, as well as spicing up the fights with more cinematic deaths. If nothing else, give it a go, see if this works for you. Feel free to share your experiences with stunting in general, this technique in particular, or your own GM tips in the comments below.

Happy gaming, all.

Monday 11-14

Sick, blogging later. I keep saying I'll make these ahead of time one day. We'll see. Later, y'all.

Cool Music

Hey all,

Thought I'd take today to share some cool music with ya. For a theme, I guess it's covers and mash-ups. I'll credit the covering artist here, and the original artists are covered in the links.

Major Songs in Minor by SteveTerreberry

Lady Judas by Wax Audio

Can't Help Falling in Love by Evan Edinger

Crocodile Chop by Neil Cicierega

Pirates of the Caribbean meets Rock Guitar Cover by Jeff Heiskell

Happy listening, all.

Game Bump: Cascade Failure

Hey all,

I'm honestly a little embarrassed that it's taken me this long to bump Cascade Failure. This is easily one of the most elegantly designed R.P.G.s I've ever played, and has facilitated some fantastic events at the gaming table. This comes from three basic things that streamline the design and make the entire game run more smoothly than many games with similar tone.

#1: Roll Under:
Cascade Failure uses a roll under system for attribute and skill checks. What this means is that, while you roll the classic O.G.L. array (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA), you then play with the goal of rolling a d20 and getting a result less than the score to succeed. So, if your score is a 16, you want a 16 or less. For a score of 8, you'll want an 8 or less. This means that bigger scores mean better abilities (which prevents the confusion of things like THAC0), and that rolling becomes substantially simplified for the players.

#2: Temporary and Permanent Damage:
Temporary damage is handled, as players might expect, through hit points. Permanent damage and death, however, are dealt in the form of attribute damage. This lets players feel a little bit tougher, while making potentially deadly fights more consequential. Once hp drops to 0, damage starts to reduce attributes. A dead party member is less narratively interesting (IMHO) than a maimed party member.

#3: Simplified Skills and Saves:
Skills and Saving Throws at level one are determined by your choice of race, class, and your ability scores. This makes an interesting challenge for power gamers while keeping character creation streamlined for plot players.

Combine all of this with a compelling setting, an intuitively overhauled alignment system, and a host of interesting races and classes to choose from at character creation, and you find a glorious system with a bit more crunch and direction than a rules-light, but drastically less granularity than many modern d20 systems.

The best part of all of this is that it's free on drive thru rpg. Honestly, I have no idea why this is free. I will say that the system has a few small areas where improvement is possible, but the core is strong enough to build on and what's already there is simple enough to facilitate easy house ruling without the same risk of game-breaking mistakes as you'll encounter in more complicated systems. Eventually, I'll plan to share a few of my own house-rules to the system (once I can dig them out of my R.P.G. shelf, it's been a while). Until then, you can find Cascade Failure here. Check it out. Happy gaming, all.

Shortened Week

What with Halloween and the associated festivities, I'm calling a short week this week: be back Friday with the Friday Funnies.

Later, all.