Tales from the Rocket House
Warning: RPG Theory Ahead. Proceed at Your Own Risk.
In case anyone has forgotten since last month, my goal was to take a quick, compact, easy to learn and use system which I’d created for swashbuckling style games, and, making only small changes, make it support grittier play styles, especially Simulationist play.
I mean "Simulationist" in the rec.games.frp.advocacy Threefold Model sense rather than the later Forgite G/N/S meaning), which, in my own paraphrasing, is this: the goal is internal consistency within the game world, with no decisions made for the sake of game challenge, genre conventions, or narrative flavor. There is no predetermined plot, no script immunity, no fate (to paraphrase Sarah Connor) but what the PC’s make.
Another, related goal was that the new version of the formerly Swashbuckling system should also support the Immersive, or Deep-In Character, play stance, described in the rec.games.frp.advocacy FAQ as "The view of the game from within the inside of the game world and its reality, usually from within the mind of a player character living within that reality. The player is thinking *as* the character -- he doesn't acknowledge Out-of-Character(OOC) information and tries to concentrate on what the character is experiencing."
The Playtest, a Narrative
The game that we played was pretty much as described in Columns Fifteen, in which I detailed the swashbuckling system, Twenty-Four, in which I explained "Zero to Gaming in Thirty Minutes," and last month’s column, Thirty-Two.
Due to some interruptions and a problem with my wireless Internet setup, "zero to gaming" actually took about 40 minutes, but that’s not so bad. We used the 3/2/1 character creation process (Select 3 Traits at Good, 2 at Very Good, and 1 at Outstanding), which leads to quite competent characters who are fairly specialized, but still have some breadth of knowledge. Gloucester’s character was a conversationalist, an activist rather than a survivalist, which put him in an interesting predicament given the zombie-infested city he was stuck in. Tom Walker had Charm at Outstanding, Human Perception and Computers at Very Good, Pilot (aircraft), Repair, and Perception at Good.
He had holed up in an apartment with his best friend’s family (friend’s wife, 10 year old stepson, 7 year old stepdaughter, the friend and his 55 year old father). The days were filled with sounds of violence, but the nights were eerily quiet, and dark. One evening, they heard over their hand-crank powered emergency radio that the Army was setting up a refuge outside of the city, to the west. The friend and his father went out to scout around that night. The next morning, they had not returned. Food was getting short, so Walker decided to try to guide the family out to the Army camp. At this point, neither he nor the family he was staying with knew there were zombies (or that the zombies were the reason the night was so quiet).
Along the way, they sneaked around and evaded most of the people out there. Gloucester generally plays his characters with a realistic level of caution, given their backgrounds and sensibilities, and this was no exception. As such, I had to force the issue somewhat to have any kind of combat come up at all. First off, he found what appeared to be a dead police officer, and when he went to check his belt for a radio (or gun), the cop turned out to be dead, but not entirely gone.
Officer Zombie tried to grab and bite (Fighting), and Tom Walker just tried to shove him off and run (Athletics). The first turn was a tie (Stalemate), with the zombie getting to its feet, but Tom breaking away from being grabbed. The second turn, the zombie won by 1 (a Basic Success), getting a good grip on him. The third turn, the zombie was trying to bite, but Walker won by 2 (Special Success), shoving the zombie back into the alley into a trash can. Although it would have taken an Exceptional Success to completely lose the zombie, it broke contact rather than follow him out into the sunlight on the main street. There wasn’t any Stunting (supporting one Trait with another) in this conflict, because nobody really had anything to Stunt with.
Escaping the zombie led them out into a major street which was choked with rotted bodies (with holes in their heads, or heads split by axes) and some bodies that were fresh. The boy, whose father frequently took him hunting (he had him 2 weekends a month, though the mother had primary custody), wanted to get one of the dead people’s guns, but Walker stopped him, in part because he didn’t want a 10 year old to have to shoot anyone, and in part because he didn’t want to risk having any of the presumed dead wake up and try to kill them.
They then ran into a small group of four rather thuggish humans. Walker saw them before they saw him, and got his friend’s family to hide behind a car. Once they saw him, two of the thugs (armed with a table leg and a machete, respectively) circled around into side streets in an attempt to flank him. The two who stayed had firearms (a pistol and a shotgun of the sort that a cop might have in her squad car).
Tom Walker used a social contest (his Charm vs. the lead thug’s Human Perception) to present himself as no threat, and to get in close. Then he attacked, using Fighting to try to grab the gang leader’s shotgun. He stunted with Charm (which I should have probably not allowed in retrospect – it was really a job for Presence, but I wanted to test the stunting part of the system, and that isn’t going to happen if I disallow everything the player wants to stunt with), shouting "FBI, drop your weapons!" While jerking the gun out of the thug’s hand. It worked, and they dropped to the ground, hands on their heads.
However, one off the two thugs who’d been sent around to flank them came out of the alley right next to the car the kids were hiding behind. Tom spun, raised the shotgun, and fired. Unskilled, which meant his chances were Bad: 2. Fortunately, the Thug’s Athletics (used to Dodge, since he didn’t have a gun and couldn’t fire back) was only Average: 3, which meant the shotgun’s +2 put him in a pretty decent position (4 vs. 3). Further, because the shotgun was loaded with Buckshot, it had an extra "Stuntable" Trait inherent to the gun itself: Buckshot (Good +1). Adding this to his total gave Tom a total of 5 against the Thug’s 3. He didn’t roll that well (-1), and got a total of 4, a Basic Success. This gave the Thug a Minor Wound (-1 Wound Penalty, no danger of bleeding out) and forced a Stun Test with the Wound Penalty given by a Minor Wound (-1). The thug’s Toughness was only Average: 3, and he rolled badly (-1), getting at total of (3 -1 penalty -1 roll) = 1. He passed out, and the fight was over.
It was getting late, so I said that some soldiers heard the noise, came and loaded everyone up into a truck, and drove them to the refugee camp, where they were inspected for zombie bites and given shelter and food, and where they were reunited with Tom’s friend and his father, who’d had to lock themselves into a closet all night to escape the zombies. Okay, it’s a bit of a shiny, happy ending for a zombie story, but "zeds swarm: everyone dies" has been done, quite literally, to death.
So, What Did We Learn?
Well, I learned that any "Tough Guy" should have a Toughness Trait above Average: 3. The thug was only knocked out because his Toughness Trait was Average. Had it been Good: 4, he’d have been Staggered (he’d basically have been Staggered and lost his ability to act for a turn, though, to be fair, there’s a good chance Tom would have just shot him again). Had his Toughness been Very Good: 5 or better, he’d have been unfazed by the Minor Wound, even with the bad roll.
I learned that dividing Traits into Attribute Traits (which default to Average: 3) and Skill Traits (which usually default to Bad: 2, unless they’re really technical) is a good idea. I’m not 100% sure defaulting to Bad: 2 or Very Bad: 1 is more appropriate. I’m still a little bit thrown by the fact that in a "gritty" game, someone with no firearms skill picked up a shotgun and dropped a guy with one shot, without even getting a particularly good roll. Granted, it was a shotgun, with buckshot, at ideal range, against a guy who had no cover and no experience in avoiding gunfire. And granted, the thug fumbled his Stun Resistance Test, but I’m still unsure about it. It seems like a bad roll should have missed, even in ideal situations.
Most of all, though, I learned that the basic concept is at least workable. Even if it still needs a few revisions (and I believe it does), there’s enough there that works to let me know that what I have attempted is not only possible, but attainable. And that makes me very happy.
Playtest II is scheduled for this week. I’ll have more to report in my next column. Until then, via con queso.
