Given the time I have before Session 20, I'm taking some time to think about Session 21 as well, since it is looking like I'll need some serious lead time to get it ready. I know the broad strokes and the set pieces I want: a climatic final operation around a major North American Word of Blake facility during the coalition landings, probably either Devil's Tower or Hilton Head. Doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, it isn't practical to model either location with the miniature rules in their entirety (Hilton Head Island is over 27 meters across in BattleTech Scale, and Devil's Tower itself would rise 1.6 meters over the battlefield.) Thus, I need to determine a specific objective for the party to attack or hold, and a scenario around that.
That means coming up with a reasonable engagement for the ComStar Party (almost certainly involving the reappearance of Precentor Lecna), likely a holding action as the civilians accomplish the mission objective. That brings me to the point of considering how a lowest-bidder-built Warhammer and an all-but-cripple Firestarter (possibly with gunship support) can be matched to a reasonably challenging Word of Blake opposing force. I'm not sure I can build a Level II that won't crush the party, so I may have to embrace the scale of A Time of War and have them fighting infantry and small vehicles by the wave. Weaving in a BattleMech commander will likely be a challenge, but I think if I can in the turmoil the landings will cause.
Nonetheless, this means I need to start determining what infantry, battle armor, vehicle, and boss BattleMechs I'll need for the final engagement. More on that soon.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Back A Bit Late
My return trip proved a bit more exciting than I anticipated, causing me to miss yesterday's entry. For that I am truly sorry to my loyal readers. I had a great week, though, and I got to play Total Warfare on the board with the Introductory Set with Philip Lee, a BattleCorps writer (Whispering Death, Fragments of History, and Seeds of Loyalty.)
I had a good time remembering what the miniatures add to the game. I'm thinking I want to build the final 'Mech engagement on a table. I need to get miniatures for all 'Mechs, which means I need to plan the battle earlier rather than later so I can get the bits shipped. I also need to decide if I'm going to run on a grid or by the miniature rules, which might work better if we run the entire game under tactical addendum.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
BattleTech on the Water
Next week I'll be going on JoCoCruise Crazy II, which means a couple of things. First, there will be no Ten Years on Terra updates during the next week. Second, I've just learned that there will indeed be BattleTech aboard in the games room, so I'm packing up a lot of my materials to go and play. It seems other people will be bringing most of the Total Warfare materials, so I'm going to focus on bringing a few other games -- BattleForce, Quick Strike, and of course, A Time of War.
I find that MegaMek covers most of my desires for simple tabletop BattleTech games, so it has been a long time since I actually rolled dice at the 'Mech level. I find that if I'm on a table, I'd much rather play BattleForce, which is described in Strategic Operations. I find the gameplay to be faster and easier than Total Warfare, and simply more fun in many circumstances. The difference is that I need to cut out a flock of counters to have to play.
I'm also lacking a good A Time of War one-shot to bring with me. I know I wrote up the ranch assault as a one-shot a while ago, but I need to find a better way to run that -- it doesn't have a great climax the way a one-shot should. I can think about it a bit, but I have precious little time to get this done.
Finally, I don't think I've ever actually played Quick Strike, although I own the PDF's for it. Most of my actual miniatures are WarShips, not 'Mechs, so I rarely get to play miniatures. The Quick Strike cards make great references for BattleForce, though.
I find that MegaMek covers most of my desires for simple tabletop BattleTech games, so it has been a long time since I actually rolled dice at the 'Mech level. I find that if I'm on a table, I'd much rather play BattleForce, which is described in Strategic Operations. I find the gameplay to be faster and easier than Total Warfare, and simply more fun in many circumstances. The difference is that I need to cut out a flock of counters to have to play.
I'm also lacking a good A Time of War one-shot to bring with me. I know I wrote up the ranch assault as a one-shot a while ago, but I need to find a better way to run that -- it doesn't have a great climax the way a one-shot should. I can think about it a bit, but I have precious little time to get this done.
Finally, I don't think I've ever actually played Quick Strike, although I own the PDF's for it. Most of my actual miniatures are WarShips, not 'Mechs, so I rarely get to play miniatures. The Quick Strike cards make great references for BattleForce, though.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Next Session
I'm thinking about Session 20 a great deal. Session 20 is the last session before our big finale, the Coalition invasion of Terra. I need to wrap up all the plotlines that aren't going to be taken care of in the final session. Specifically:
1) The Missouri Cell: I can handle these guys in either Session 20 or 21, but I should provide some capstone to their story.
2) Alex's Parents: Alex is starting to suspect Cho of being involved in the death of his parents, although he doesn't know how. I should cap this one out in Session 20.
3) Bruce Lecna: I need to track down what happens to this guy late in the Jihad and where he ends up. He could easily be handled in Session 21, and provide a nice full-circle effect for the campaign.
4) TerraSec: It would be almost impossible to get the party cleared legitimately, but something that assures that at least Simon and Clark will never be wanted by TerraSec again.
5) Simon's Descent Into Madness: Simon has been gradually losing it over the course of the campaign, and there is an opportunity to do something interesting here. I need to think it through.
Now, tying all of these together in one session is a non-trivial challenge. Think, think, think...
1) The Missouri Cell: I can handle these guys in either Session 20 or 21, but I should provide some capstone to their story.
2) Alex's Parents: Alex is starting to suspect Cho of being involved in the death of his parents, although he doesn't know how. I should cap this one out in Session 20.
3) Bruce Lecna: I need to track down what happens to this guy late in the Jihad and where he ends up. He could easily be handled in Session 21, and provide a nice full-circle effect for the campaign.
4) TerraSec: It would be almost impossible to get the party cleared legitimately, but something that assures that at least Simon and Clark will never be wanted by TerraSec again.
5) Simon's Descent Into Madness: Simon has been gradually losing it over the course of the campaign, and there is an opportunity to do something interesting here. I need to think it through.
Now, tying all of these together in one session is a non-trivial challenge. Think, think, think...
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Adjusting Runtime
Session 19, as written, ran long. I was able to drop a number of challenges from the session. The actual attack run of the DropShip was something I had plotted out with a number of issues, including ground control, air control, aerospace engagement, and surface fire from the Wyrm itself. As it is, I ended up cutting everything except the Wyrm's engagement.
So far I've been pretty consistently running 15-30 minutes over in sessions, so I was pleased to ballast this session out to within only a few minutes of the correct time (slightly short, in fact.) Unfortunately, the session ended up being more about Alan than I really wanted, since he was the only one acting for the terminal phase of the mission. Originally, I had envisioned Cho making the pickup from the sea, but alas, Henry wasn't able to make it to Session 19, so I had Alexei fill that role.
So far I've been pretty consistently running 15-30 minutes over in sessions, so I was pleased to ballast this session out to within only a few minutes of the correct time (slightly short, in fact.) Unfortunately, the session ended up being more about Alan than I really wanted, since he was the only one acting for the terminal phase of the mission. Originally, I had envisioned Cho making the pickup from the sea, but alas, Henry wasn't able to make it to Session 19, so I had Alexei fill that role.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Session 19
At Session 19, the party was introduced to their new member, Alan Fischer, of the Lyran Intelligence Corps. The hook into this session was Clark receiving a letter from his cousin Pleatus on New Earth, i.e., his ComStar contact. The letter told him to meet Alan at a diner a few dozen miles east of Denver. The party quickly acquired Alan and returned to the ranch so he could bring them up to speed on the operation he had been sent to accomplish.
Alan has been given a mission plan profile to crash a DropShip into the Wyrm being launched from Galveston in late March 3076. He had been instructed to acquire assistance from the Terran resistance as he did so. He was somewhat dismayed to discover that the cell he had been sent to contact was only four men, and that they had limited ability to contact the other cells. Despite that shock, the plan went forward.
Simon called a meeting with Alexei, representing the Denver cell, and the as-yet-unnamed woman who represents the Missouri cell. He asked for their help in a new operation. Alexei declined out of hand, indicating a lack of resources, while the Missouri group was interested in helping. Alan explained the broad strokes of the plan to them, and the Missouri group agreed to help deal with the crew of the DropShip the party decided to steal.
In preparation, the party found a DropShip of suitable size and cargo for their purposes, and arranged to make a shipment on that ship via a shell company Clark constructed for the purpose. They rented a panel truck and formed up a high-value "Escort Required" crate, and booked it through their target DropShip.
The night before the operation, the party called their Missouri contact, and gave him the name of the DropShip. They arrived to learn that most of the ship's crew had been taken ill with food poisoning. Moving quickly, they proceeded to use tranquilizers and stun sticks on the remaining crew members (many of which were taken from the previous raid on the ranch), and soon had control of the ship.
Their schedule was delayed four hours due to ground control issues and the fact that the crew had told the spaceport they would need to delay their departure, but soon Alan piloted the DropShip into the sky, and toward the Wyrm's dockyard.
About this time, Alan learned that the Wyrm had launched and was already clear of the channel and heading out to sea. With a considerable quantity of both effort and edge, he was able to line up the DropShip on the moving Wyrm underneath, and at a significant penalty, bail out before the DropShip crashed into the Wyrm right on target, splitting the SDS in half and sinking it.
As Alan floated in the water, a helicopter pulled up overhead, containing Alexei in Search And Rescue gear to pull Alan out of the ocean. Although unexpected, the rescue was welcome, and the session ended on a very positive note.
Alan has been given a mission plan profile to crash a DropShip into the Wyrm being launched from Galveston in late March 3076. He had been instructed to acquire assistance from the Terran resistance as he did so. He was somewhat dismayed to discover that the cell he had been sent to contact was only four men, and that they had limited ability to contact the other cells. Despite that shock, the plan went forward.
Simon called a meeting with Alexei, representing the Denver cell, and the as-yet-unnamed woman who represents the Missouri cell. He asked for their help in a new operation. Alexei declined out of hand, indicating a lack of resources, while the Missouri group was interested in helping. Alan explained the broad strokes of the plan to them, and the Missouri group agreed to help deal with the crew of the DropShip the party decided to steal.
In preparation, the party found a DropShip of suitable size and cargo for their purposes, and arranged to make a shipment on that ship via a shell company Clark constructed for the purpose. They rented a panel truck and formed up a high-value "Escort Required" crate, and booked it through their target DropShip.
The night before the operation, the party called their Missouri contact, and gave him the name of the DropShip. They arrived to learn that most of the ship's crew had been taken ill with food poisoning. Moving quickly, they proceeded to use tranquilizers and stun sticks on the remaining crew members (many of which were taken from the previous raid on the ranch), and soon had control of the ship.
Their schedule was delayed four hours due to ground control issues and the fact that the crew had told the spaceport they would need to delay their departure, but soon Alan piloted the DropShip into the sky, and toward the Wyrm's dockyard.
About this time, Alan learned that the Wyrm had launched and was already clear of the channel and heading out to sea. With a considerable quantity of both effort and edge, he was able to line up the DropShip on the moving Wyrm underneath, and at a significant penalty, bail out before the DropShip crashed into the Wyrm right on target, splitting the SDS in half and sinking it.
As Alan floated in the water, a helicopter pulled up overhead, containing Alexei in Search And Rescue gear to pull Alan out of the ocean. Although unexpected, the rescue was welcome, and the session ended on a very positive note.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Unlikely Collisions
It has come time for me to determine what happens when a DropShip crashes into a Mobile Structure.
For this adventure design, I'm going to work from the climax back. First off, the point of impact. The base rules for Ramming Attacks are in Total Warfare, p. 241. I admit, I have rarely had to consult Total Warfare in this campaign, so it is nice to dust that book off. The attack calls for pilot to make a steeling check (2D6 against a TN of 10), which I can likely handwave with roleplaying, especially since the plan calls for the pilot to bail out shortly before impact. The actual attack role is a base TN of 6 modified by damage, target type, and attacker type. Unfortunately, the rules in Total Warfare only talk about spacecraft ramming other spacecraft. For spacecraft ramming a mobile structure, I need to flip open Strategic Operations to page 96, where there is the Expanded Ramming Attacks Table.
Here we learn that the modifier to hit a Mobile Structure is Variable (footnote). Looking at the footnote, we find that Mobile Structures apply a -2 to every ten hexes (round up) the structure has. Given the Wyrm is an 18-hex Mobile Structure, we get a -4 to hit it. Of course, in order to actually split and sink the ship, the party needs to hit a relatively specific point on the Wyrm, but we'll get to that in a bit.
In Tactical Operations, page 168, there are rules for Mobile Structures ramming DropShips, but damage application in the other direction is less clear. Attacks against Mobile Structures are done as per attacks against buildings, but again, there are no good rules for multihex DropShips crashing into multihex buildings. So here's how I'm ruling this engagement.
There is a point attack -- the Aim Hex -- that the actual ramming attack is centered on. I can calculate the amount of damage this attack will do if successful (the mass of the DropShip divided by ten, times the impact speed in aerohexes.) Assuming the DropShip impacts nose-first, the damage it does will be divided by the impact profile (linearly to make the math easier), which for a small DropShip should be just about the width of the Wyrm.
The plan as filed calls for a Buccaneer-class DropShip (Technical Readout: 3057, page 26), although many different ships could work. A Buccaneer has a mass of 3,500 tons, meaning it will do 350 damage per unit of velocity on impact. It also has a beam of 127 meters and height of 30 meters, making its impact profile a row of hexes four long. That means that the DropShip will do 87 damage to each of those hexes as it impacts per point of velocity. Each Wyrm hex has 300 points of combined armor and construction factor, indicating that the DropShip will have to be underway at at least four velocity at the moment of impact to destroy the hexes it hits. The DropShip has a Maximum Thrust of 5, meaning it is well within its capability to be traveling at that speed in atmosphere -- with the throttle winged open, it can maintain a flight speed of 10 in atmo.
There is one more complication, because this is running at the RPG-scale and we track such things. A Buccaneer weighs 3,500 tons fully loaded. If it is not fully loaded, its 2,308.5-ton cargo bay is at least partially empty, reducing the ship's mass to 1,191.5 tons, and its damage on impact to 119 points per velocity. At this mass, the ship needs to be moving 11 hexes per turn, beyond its top speed, to do the damage it needs to do.
Now, all this presumes that the impact occurs on-target. Being as this is a RPG roll, the attack roll will be the pilot's Piloting/Aerospace with a heap of modifiers. The first will be -4 for hitting the enormous target. The second will be +1 because they're flying a DropShip. The next will be +4, since the terminal phase of the flight be be unmanned (the pilot expects to bail out just before impact.) In addition, there may be damage modifiers if their intentions are detected ahead of time. If the roll fails, the DropShip misses by MoF hexes, and almost certainly will fail to sink the Wyrm, and may well miss entirely.
Of course, before they can do that, the party needs to obtain this DropShip, which is almost an adventure in itself. So very, very much that can go wrong with this plan. Tune in Monday to hear how it turns out.
For this adventure design, I'm going to work from the climax back. First off, the point of impact. The base rules for Ramming Attacks are in Total Warfare, p. 241. I admit, I have rarely had to consult Total Warfare in this campaign, so it is nice to dust that book off. The attack calls for pilot to make a steeling check (2D6 against a TN of 10), which I can likely handwave with roleplaying, especially since the plan calls for the pilot to bail out shortly before impact. The actual attack role is a base TN of 6 modified by damage, target type, and attacker type. Unfortunately, the rules in Total Warfare only talk about spacecraft ramming other spacecraft. For spacecraft ramming a mobile structure, I need to flip open Strategic Operations to page 96, where there is the Expanded Ramming Attacks Table.
Here we learn that the modifier to hit a Mobile Structure is Variable (footnote). Looking at the footnote, we find that Mobile Structures apply a -2 to every ten hexes (round up) the structure has. Given the Wyrm is an 18-hex Mobile Structure, we get a -4 to hit it. Of course, in order to actually split and sink the ship, the party needs to hit a relatively specific point on the Wyrm, but we'll get to that in a bit.
In Tactical Operations, page 168, there are rules for Mobile Structures ramming DropShips, but damage application in the other direction is less clear. Attacks against Mobile Structures are done as per attacks against buildings, but again, there are no good rules for multihex DropShips crashing into multihex buildings. So here's how I'm ruling this engagement.
There is a point attack -- the Aim Hex -- that the actual ramming attack is centered on. I can calculate the amount of damage this attack will do if successful (the mass of the DropShip divided by ten, times the impact speed in aerohexes.) Assuming the DropShip impacts nose-first, the damage it does will be divided by the impact profile (linearly to make the math easier), which for a small DropShip should be just about the width of the Wyrm.
The plan as filed calls for a Buccaneer-class DropShip (Technical Readout: 3057, page 26), although many different ships could work. A Buccaneer has a mass of 3,500 tons, meaning it will do 350 damage per unit of velocity on impact. It also has a beam of 127 meters and height of 30 meters, making its impact profile a row of hexes four long. That means that the DropShip will do 87 damage to each of those hexes as it impacts per point of velocity. Each Wyrm hex has 300 points of combined armor and construction factor, indicating that the DropShip will have to be underway at at least four velocity at the moment of impact to destroy the hexes it hits. The DropShip has a Maximum Thrust of 5, meaning it is well within its capability to be traveling at that speed in atmosphere -- with the throttle winged open, it can maintain a flight speed of 10 in atmo.
There is one more complication, because this is running at the RPG-scale and we track such things. A Buccaneer weighs 3,500 tons fully loaded. If it is not fully loaded, its 2,308.5-ton cargo bay is at least partially empty, reducing the ship's mass to 1,191.5 tons, and its damage on impact to 119 points per velocity. At this mass, the ship needs to be moving 11 hexes per turn, beyond its top speed, to do the damage it needs to do.
Now, all this presumes that the impact occurs on-target. Being as this is a RPG roll, the attack roll will be the pilot's Piloting/Aerospace with a heap of modifiers. The first will be -4 for hitting the enormous target. The second will be +1 because they're flying a DropShip. The next will be +4, since the terminal phase of the flight be be unmanned (the pilot expects to bail out just before impact.) In addition, there may be damage modifiers if their intentions are detected ahead of time. If the roll fails, the DropShip misses by MoF hexes, and almost certainly will fail to sink the Wyrm, and may well miss entirely.
Of course, before they can do that, the party needs to obtain this DropShip, which is almost an adventure in itself. So very, very much that can go wrong with this plan. Tune in Monday to hear how it turns out.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Filing A Flight Plan
Session 19 is the first one in which we're working off a PC's plan. Alan (Morgan's replacement character) has drawn up a plan to destroy the Wyrm by crashing a DropShip into it. This was come to after many hours of trying to figure out how the party could infiltrate the ship and destroy it from within; it turns out that the nature of mobile structures like the Wyrm make them extremely resilient even to ammunition explosions, and the party would've had to cook off nearly a dozen magazines to sink the ship. Anything short of a small nuclear weapon simply won't one-shot this vessel, and the Resistance has no nuclear capability.
Morgan submitted a mission plan. It is quite detailed, including satellite pictures of the Galveston shipyard the Wyrm is launching from. It lays out a pretty good description of how he intends the session to go, and by reading this, I can decide ahead of time what will go according to plan and what will not.
I really need to get my players to do this every week, but alas, both thematically and culturally in my gaming group, that is unlikely to happen.
Morgan submitted a mission plan. It is quite detailed, including satellite pictures of the Galveston shipyard the Wyrm is launching from. It lays out a pretty good description of how he intends the session to go, and by reading this, I can decide ahead of time what will go according to plan and what will not.
I really need to get my players to do this every week, but alas, both thematically and culturally in my gaming group, that is unlikely to happen.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Rolling Up
Morgan is rolling up his replacement character, a LOKI agent dropped onto Terra to connect with the Resistance and prepare Terra for the Coalition invasion. He is drawing up an operational plan to destroy the Wyrm the party encountered earlier in this game. The ship is scheduled to launch in early 3076, and the party will make its move then.
With this new concept, no part of Shin's backstory is salvagable, so that arc is terminated. I don't think I'm going to draft a new story for Alan, the new character, because we've only got a handful of sessions left in the campaign.
With this new concept, no part of Shin's backstory is salvagable, so that arc is terminated. I don't think I'm going to draft a new story for Alan, the new character, because we've only got a handful of sessions left in the campaign.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Session 18
Session 18 was, as expected, a political session. Simon's wounds were healed at the expense of four Edge points, and Cho returned from the Chicago bombing without Shin. Predictably, the rest of the party was quite upset. Alex finally let go and yelled at Cho about his attitude problems, and in the process went a long way toward repairing the rift between the ComStar group and the civilians. Cho went off to live in the mountains, since he was afraid the license he used to rent the truck used in the bombing might be traced back to him, but he is staying in intermittent contact with the party.
We spent about half of this session handling a lot of roleplaying elements. After failing three Career rolls in a row and then botching the fourth, Anthony decided that Simon was fired in June of 3075. Around this time, Simon has a psychotic break under the pressure he's been exposed to for now over seven years. He took a compulsion that made it harder for him to deal with the "regular" world, and used that modifier as he searched for a new job. He finally found a new position in November.
Alex and Clark spent much of the time trying to help Simon, although Simon didn't seem terribly interested in their aid. Alex took the time to mothball Shin's power armor (he didn't have it when he died), and stored it with the Warhammer.
Cho went into the mountains and began connecting with other resistance groups, primarily the northern California cell they worked with during the mission to the old HPG station in Fresno. Primarily they did recon and information gathering of WoB deployment and patrols, for future use in an invasion.
Overall, this session provided an interesting break and a chance to catch up on paperwork for the group. It was generally well-received, but I think only because we've had so much action of late -- giving the players a chance to explore their interpersonal relationship was important here, and I think went over very well.
We spent about half of this session handling a lot of roleplaying elements. After failing three Career rolls in a row and then botching the fourth, Anthony decided that Simon was fired in June of 3075. Around this time, Simon has a psychotic break under the pressure he's been exposed to for now over seven years. He took a compulsion that made it harder for him to deal with the "regular" world, and used that modifier as he searched for a new job. He finally found a new position in November.
Alex and Clark spent much of the time trying to help Simon, although Simon didn't seem terribly interested in their aid. Alex took the time to mothball Shin's power armor (he didn't have it when he died), and stored it with the Warhammer.
Cho went into the mountains and began connecting with other resistance groups, primarily the northern California cell they worked with during the mission to the old HPG station in Fresno. Primarily they did recon and information gathering of WoB deployment and patrols, for future use in an invasion.
Overall, this session provided an interesting break and a chance to catch up on paperwork for the group. It was generally well-received, but I think only because we've had so much action of late -- giving the players a chance to explore their interpersonal relationship was important here, and I think went over very well.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Session 17.5
In the immediate aftermath of Session 17, Shin and Cho read the news report that their mission to Chicago had spawned. After catching six hours of sleep, they departed the next morning back to the outskirts of Chicago to fix the mess they had made. They reached the city, and in a frantic search, found a beaten truck they could rent for a few hours, broke into a quarry in the dead of the night, and stole away with two and a half tons of high explosive. The next morning they parked the truck in front of the building containing the TerraSec DNA testing lab, the lab which would lead TerraSec directly back to Simon and Clark as soon as it completed its testing of their blood from the attack site.
Cho headed back to the helicopter, and Shin stayed behind to set the timers. He discovered that he was unable to get the first one to work, nor was he able to get the second timer one to work. On his third attempt, at 0606 on 19 April 3075, Shin accidentally detonated the truck's payload while trying to arm it, and was killed instantly as the building he destroyed the testing lab.
I am a bit mixed on this intersession game. First off, this represents the first character death the party has had. Shin was completely out of Edge points when he botched the demolitions check. While character death is a healthy thing for a party to experience, and in this particular circumstance it opens up a number of narrative options for me when Morgan rolls up a new character, it still has the stench of some kind of failure around it.
After the session, Morgan and I discussed his options, including dropping the campaign or re-rolling. We talked a bit about the future of the campaign in broad strokes (it helps that Morgan is by far the best briefed on BattleTech history), and the immediate future. Two considerations came dominantly into play; the first being that the party needed a good technician, and the second being that soon I needed a clever way to re-establish contact with ComStar or the Coalition so they could coordinate pre-invasion operations with the Resistance. The logical conclusion was to bring Morgan back to play a liaison that is sent to the party to provide them with direction and instruction.
The second item I feel a bit ambivalent about is the surprisingly terroristic turn this campaign has taken; while each individual action was a mission that had a clear objective, the way in which the party executed a number of them, culminating in Shin's truck-bombing to save the party from TerraSec, has a definite asymmetric feel to it that harkens to the worst parts of modern current events. While I suppose this allows expression of how regular people could find themselves caught up in this sort of misadventure, narratively the story this campaign is taking has taken a serious turn for the dark. It is not quite as light as I intended a game that runs on Sunday morning to be.
Onward and upward, though. Session 18 (which has not run at time of writing), it seems, will now be largely a 3075 session dealing with the immediate aftermath of Session 17.
Cho headed back to the helicopter, and Shin stayed behind to set the timers. He discovered that he was unable to get the first one to work, nor was he able to get the second timer one to work. On his third attempt, at 0606 on 19 April 3075, Shin accidentally detonated the truck's payload while trying to arm it, and was killed instantly as the building he destroyed the testing lab.
I am a bit mixed on this intersession game. First off, this represents the first character death the party has had. Shin was completely out of Edge points when he botched the demolitions check. While character death is a healthy thing for a party to experience, and in this particular circumstance it opens up a number of narrative options for me when Morgan rolls up a new character, it still has the stench of some kind of failure around it.
After the session, Morgan and I discussed his options, including dropping the campaign or re-rolling. We talked a bit about the future of the campaign in broad strokes (it helps that Morgan is by far the best briefed on BattleTech history), and the immediate future. Two considerations came dominantly into play; the first being that the party needed a good technician, and the second being that soon I needed a clever way to re-establish contact with ComStar or the Coalition so they could coordinate pre-invasion operations with the Resistance. The logical conclusion was to bring Morgan back to play a liaison that is sent to the party to provide them with direction and instruction.
The second item I feel a bit ambivalent about is the surprisingly terroristic turn this campaign has taken; while each individual action was a mission that had a clear objective, the way in which the party executed a number of them, culminating in Shin's truck-bombing to save the party from TerraSec, has a definite asymmetric feel to it that harkens to the worst parts of modern current events. While I suppose this allows expression of how regular people could find themselves caught up in this sort of misadventure, narratively the story this campaign is taking has taken a serious turn for the dark. It is not quite as light as I intended a game that runs on Sunday morning to be.
Onward and upward, though. Session 18 (which has not run at time of writing), it seems, will now be largely a 3075 session dealing with the immediate aftermath of Session 17.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Dateline Chicago 3075
AP (CHICAGO) -- 24 APRIL 3075 -- This morning seventeen people were brutally murdered in Chicago in one of the most bizarre cases of terrorism yet seen on Terra.
Five men, already deemed “The Chicago Five” at most media outlets, entered the Wilcox Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and attacked a small business center on the 41st floor. Four of the men were wearing ski masks, while the last one wore what appeared to be a gorilla costume.
The five men overwhelmed two off-duty TerraSec officers, Dale Hurbeard, 34, and Paul Escobar, who heroically attempted to stop the attack. Escobar was brutally decapitated.
The attackers then bound the wrists of each of the fifteen workers on duty at the company, then told them they were going to kill them. The scientists begged for their lives, so the attackers cut off the hands of all of the workers, still bound at the wrist. The five men then set explosive charges on times around the office, and left. A few minutes later, the charges exploded, killing the maimed people on the 41st floor.
This afternoon salvaged security footage of the attack showed the sheer vicious horror of the attacks, right up until the explosive killed the disabled victims, screaming for help up to the end. The Voice of Blake has deemed the raw footage unfit for public broadcast.
Reacting to the news, Precentor TerraSec David Alsace said, “This level of violence cannot even be called callous -- it is a willful infliction of maximum suffering on innocent people. The continued attacks by Successor House, ComStar, and Clan agents on our people only makes more obvious the depraved depths that our enemies will sink to. I assure you, the full resources of TerraSec are being brought to bear to identify these offenders and see them brought to justice. This afternoon I am instructing the Office of Terran Security to place these five culprits at the top of TerraSec’s Most Wanted, and we are authorizing a ten million C-Bill reward on each of them.”
At this time all five suspects remain at large. Any tips should be forwarded to the Office of Terran Security at Geneva.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Fractures
One problem that frequently crops up in games I have historically run is that the distinction between character and player often blurs very quickly. It can easily be presumed that tabletop role playing games provide outlets for us to explore ways adventures we could never experience in our regular lives. As such, many, I might even say most, PC's are stand-ins for the players themselves. As such, disagreements, arguments, and betrayals quickly and easily transition from gamespace to realspace, and utterly preposterous circumstances in a fictional world cause problems that can strongly affect relationships in the real one.
The ability to dissociate character from player is one of the most important skills a gamer can have. Besides the compartmentalization that every gamer needs to distinguish the difference between appropriate behavior in a game versus appropriate behavior in real life, being able to differentiate, in a real and meaningful way, the emotional state of a character from the emotional state of the player is what allows for not only thinly-veiled versions of ourselves to adventure in the future, but to explore entirely different personalities from our own. In many ways, these skills are similar to the set of abilities very good non-Method actors must cultivate in order to portray a character without becoming that character.
The recent differences that Session 17 has brought to our game has reminded me of the exceptionally skilled group I am playing with, that the concerns being leveled are those of characters departing the party for reasons of their own morality and fears. This easily could have exploded into out-of-game drama in other parties I have GM'd and PC'd.
In other news, Shin is trying to assemble a plan to eliminate the worst of the threat TerraSec now poses to the party, and we've scheduled an intersession run on Friday night.
The ability to dissociate character from player is one of the most important skills a gamer can have. Besides the compartmentalization that every gamer needs to distinguish the difference between appropriate behavior in a game versus appropriate behavior in real life, being able to differentiate, in a real and meaningful way, the emotional state of a character from the emotional state of the player is what allows for not only thinly-veiled versions of ourselves to adventure in the future, but to explore entirely different personalities from our own. In many ways, these skills are similar to the set of abilities very good non-Method actors must cultivate in order to portray a character without becoming that character.
The recent differences that Session 17 has brought to our game has reminded me of the exceptionally skilled group I am playing with, that the concerns being leveled are those of characters departing the party for reasons of their own morality and fears. This easily could have exploded into out-of-game drama in other parties I have GM'd and PC'd.
In other news, Shin is trying to assemble a plan to eliminate the worst of the threat TerraSec now poses to the party, and we've scheduled an intersession run on Friday night.
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