Beginner's Luck - 11th Season

The latest season for my Beginner's Luck StarCluster game over IRC started in earnest last Sunday. I have been running a campaign per year starting in 2003, so this is the 11th season. In it, the crew of the Beginner's Luck made a normal, everyday jump from one system to another, and mis-jumped completely out of the Cluster, some 25 LY from the nearest star of the cluster (as measured by triangulating from known pulsars) into a completely different area of the universe.

They were picked up by a crew of very humanoid looking women in a moderate (frigate sized) military vessel, and are being brought to the nearest inhabited planet. There are four marines/soldiers on the Luck, riding with them to make sure they don't deviate.

These people, the Jeshen, are communicating in an evolved German with the lone linguist among the Luck's crew, who is serving as an interpreter, They call this language "Human Language".

What they have discovered:

The Jeshen may be genetically engineered Humans put here long, long ago, or they may be a case of extreme convergent evolution. They are not female, but hermaphroditic, they are pure carnivores with needle-sharp teeth, and the more they get to know them, the less human they seem.

They welcomed humans into their "Jeshen Space" hundreds of years ago, as allies against the Etvar, an alien race who most likely constructed the wormhole jump network uniting the Cluster. Some of the inhabited worlds in this system are Human worlds.

Jeshen do not own slaves - that is, sapient beings are not property. Self-aware robots, constructs, Uplifts, and aliens are free peoples. Humans, on the other hand, argued that they needed slaves when they entered Jeshen Space, and are allowed to keep their slaves on their own worlds. The Jeshen were shocked that the Uplift and bio-construct aboard the Luck as crew were not slaves of the Humans aboard.

There is no record of any previous contact between the Jeshen and people from the Cluster. The Humans seem to be slow-boat refugees from Earth, like the ones who founded the Cluster.

So far, it is going in strange and unpredictable directions, which is loads of fun!

New Playtest of High Strung

After making some adjustments in the Hope mechanic, we tried a second playtest of _High Strung_. This time the players decided to operate out of LA, and play older musicians 'getting the band back together'.

The Band was _Trouble in Paradise_, which had broken up due to creative differences. The band consisted of Jazzy - the female lead singer and keyboard player, Gaz - the male bass player, Cody - the male guitarist, and Maddy - the female drummer. All the members of the group sang to some extent - a feature of its songs were the fine group harmonies. The breakup had occurred between Gaz and Cody. Gaz always spoke in the the third person - "The Gaz doesn't like country music", while Cody despised this habit. Jazzy and Maddy had roped Gaz and Cody into one more shot at the big time, against their better judgement.

Nobody in the band had achieved any success while the band was broken up, so they grudgingly gave in. Nasty cards were used profligately, especially between Cody and Gaz. For example, Cody stole tubes from Gaz's amp, and replaced them with old tubes from his amp; while Gaz introduced Cody to a girl - Gaz's sister - who he thought Cody would hate, but it backfired when she became Cody's S.O.

While the band was broken up, their agent had died - choked to death on someone else's vomit - so they had to find a new agent. They finally settled on one, and she got the band a gig at a metro club. The band practiced and premiered a new song written by Jazzy, "Good Girls Do", to go along with their old songs. The band did well, drawing a fair crowd and putting on a good show, and the song was well received, but not wildly popular.

They ground through another period between gigs, having made enough Hope to get through, though Cody was getting dangerously low. Being older they had a smaller reserve than kids, though their Hope ablated away slower as well. Their next gig, also at a metro club - clubs are ranked as local, metro, regional, and national in order of importance - went very well, and more importantly, their second new song: "Live For The Moment", by Cody, was premiered to great appreciation. This gave an upswell of Hope to the band, and they decided to record it as a demo.

After some unbelievably good rolls in the studio, and a possibly troubling bit in the rules - a small thing, but something I didn't think of, whether PCs could use their promotion skills for demo songs, which may require a small adjustment to the Demo Release Table - the song was released as a demo, made the local playlists on the radio, and garnered the band a one album deal with a local record company, Hollywood records. This bumped up the band from "Struggling" status to "Aspiring", gaining them an extra die when getting gigs.

We left it there, and will revisit the band next week.

First Playtest for High Strung

 

So last night I ran my first alpha playtest of High Strung. We had a great time, but there were problems with the Hope mechanic. After the game we sat around and analyzed what was going wrong and threw out ideas to fix it. There were small problems which compounded to throw off the balance of the Hope mechanic.  Other than that, we all thought the game was a blast.

What happened was that in releasing their demo tape after only two gigs,  the PCs A: threw large amounts of Hope into the song to generate large dice pools after B: generating very high Target Numbers because they  were C: so super skilled, which resulted in ultra high scores on the Demo release chart.

We decided on several fixes:

A: Instead of allowing characters to gain 1 die per Hope invested, we decided to ramp up the Hope cost of dice. Up to three dice, the cost is 1 Hope per die. Then the cost escalates rapidly by one Hope per die, so the fourth die costs two Hope, the fifth costs three Hope, the sixth costs four Hope, etc.

B: We decided to prorate the TN generated by the status of the band. A band at Fledgeling Status would have its TN multiplied by 0.25. A band at Struggling Status would have its TN multiplied by 0.50, etc. This simulates the beneficial effect of experience and emphasizes the importance of gigging.

C: Skills for PCs would be capped at three ranks for characters under 24. This prevents young characters from egregiously loading up on performance skills at the expense of other skills important to other aspects of the game.

We think these tweaks will result in a game sustainable for longer periods, better simulating the experience.

Alpha Testing Commences for High Strung

Yesterday, in preparation for Saturday's marathon one shot, Klax read through High Strung and made some excellent suggestions.

In High Strung, to make a character you put together two templates, a background and an age. The background tells you what you did previously, and gives you a list of 5 skills to pick from, a musical Style, and a +1 to one attribute. The age gives you how many points you can put into skills, what kind of job you have, and how many Hope you start with.

Klax noted that there was only one pure vocalist and one pure instrumentalist background. He also noted that it would be great to have a background with neither Play Instrument nor Sing skills available. So we hammered out three new backgrounds - Acapella, Instrumental Wiz, and Roadie Plus.

A second suggestion was to include an Improv skill, usable not only in performing, but when unexpected emergencies happen - which they do with alarming regularity in this game! - so you can work around them. Since there are a set number of skills - 2 per Attribute - this necessitated removal of one. We decided on replacing Repair, a skill of limited use, which could be subsumed in Improv anyway. We also had to go back into the backgrounds and change the skill lists to reflect this new skill - a simple substitution for repair would not be right.

So the game currently sits at 28 pages, with little if anything left to add to extend that. A fairly light game, with little to no prep, fast characters, and lots of strangeness.

Tomorrow I am running a day-long one shot of High Strung, from 1-10 PM, with breaks for dinner and dessert. joining our usual band of playtesters are three ex-players, two of whom are musicians, so the game has some added depth for them!

"Yer After Me Lucky Charms!" The RPG

I wrote this RPG last November. It took me a day or two, and it was on a dare. :D

"Yer After Me Lucky Charms!" The RPG

Setting is Ireland during the English Occupation.

Player Character Types: (Choose 1 skill at 3, and one at 1, with the rest at 2)
All PCs may use Magic and have 3 life points

Aes Sidhe
Legendary elf from under the hill
Attributes: Pluck 2, Luck 1, Power 5, Faith 4, Smarts 3
Allowed Skills: Fight, Recover, Bless, Maneuver, Survive

Leprechaun
Mischevious magical shoemaker
Attributes: Pluck 1, Luck 5, Power 2, Faith 3, Smarts 4
Allowed Skills: Fight, Notice, Heal, Fool, Escape

Selkie
Shape-changing seal
Attributes: Pluck 3, Luck 4, Power 3, Faith 5, Smarts 1
Allowed Skills: Fist, Recover, Heal, Maneuver, Survive

Kelpie
Malevolent water-horse
Attributes: Pluck 5, Luck 2, Power 4, Faith 1, Smarts 2
Allowed Skills: Fight, Recover, Bless, Fool, Survive

Pooka
Trickster sublime
Attributes: Pluck 4, Luck 3, Power 1, Faith 2, Smarts 5
Allowed Skills: Fist, Notice, Bless, Fool, Escape

Non-Player Character Types:
NPCs do not use Magic and have 3 Life Points

Sassenachs
Attributes: Pluck 3, Luck 3, Power 3, Faith 3, Smarts 3
Allowed Skills: All at 3

The World - used to oppose skills checks without NPCs
No Attribute or Skill, but always equals seven, bits added mean additional difficulty.

Attributes:
Pluck (Tree) Ability to keep going - Skills relying on Pluck use the Tree Oat Bit
Luck (Clover) Ability to survive - Skills relying on Pluck use the Clover Oat Bit
Power (Cross) Ability to deal harm - Skills relying on Pluck use the Cross Oat Bit
Faith (Fish) Ability to heal body and mind - Skills relying on Pluck use the Fish Oat Bit
Smarts (Bell) Ability to think - Skills relying on Pluck use the Bell Oat Bit

Skills:
Fist [Power] Punching and wrestling - non-lethal combat
Fight [Power] Shooting and stabbing - lethal combat
Recover [Pluck] Natural self-healing - heals 1 life point to self if injured and not dead
Notice [Pluck] Spotting hidden things - each additional point of success is something else spotted.
Bless [Faith] Healing minds - heals 1 life point to self or others if Confused
Heal [Faith] Healing bodies - heals 1 life point to others if injured and not dead
Maneuver [Smarts] Getting the better position - success means +3 to next Skill Check
Fool [Smarts] Misdirection and duping - mental combat
Escape [Luck] Getting out of Dodge - May break the encounter and flee if successful
Survive [Luck] A slip in time can save your life - A success avoids 1 Life Point otherwise lost

Magic Marshmallow Bits
Hearts - Confer healing so intense, they can even bring dead characters back to life.
Shooting Stars - Allow the caster to fly for one round.
Horseshoes - Allow the caster to act three times in the next round.
Clovers - Allow the caster to be invulnerable for that round.
Blue Moons - Make the caster invisible.
Rainbows - Teleport the caster anywhere and back.
Balloons - Make any three human targets weightless and floaty.
Hourglass - Allow the caster to turn back time to the previous round.

Play Setup

Players pick one PC type character at a time in any order established, but only one of each character type may be chosen. Players apportion skill points, and name their characters.
GM only plays Sassenachs.
Each player and the GM grabs a blind handful of Lucky Charms from the box. This only happens once, before play begins for the session. The GM may nominate a single person to grab handfuls, to avoid hand size disparities.
Since the GM has no use for Marshmallow Bits - Magic - he or she may auction them off to the highest bidder for Oat Bits of a particular type, and the GM may set a minimum bid. i.e. "I have here a Rainbow! I'm taking only Crosses for this, and minimum bid is three!" If the minimum bid is not met - or just on a whim - the GM may eat unsold Marshmallow Bits. If the minimum bid is met and paid, however, the GM must hand over the Marshmallow Bit bid for.

Resolution

All skill checks are opposed. Skills unopposed by NPCs are opposed by The World.
Players add together Attribute and Skill, plus from zero to three Oat Bits of the proper type, and compare them to the NPCs - or other player character's - Attribute+Skill+Bits, or to The World.
Highest total wins. Any points over the loser 's total may be used to remove Life Points for Fist, Fight, or Fool.
At Zero Life Points, the character is either Unconscious (Fist) Dead (Fight) or Confused (Fool). Confused characters are unable to take any action, even to save themselves.
When you run out of the proper Oat Bits, you can only use Skill + Attribute
When you run out of Magic Marshmallows, no more can Magic be performed.
Bits added to actions of the World are shown openly - Players know how difficult a task is. Bits added to character - PC or NPC - actions are revealed simultaneously.


This game is not copyrighted, and may be used freely for whatever you want. Add stuff, take away stuff, change stuff - it's all cool.

Wrangling High Strung Into Playable Shape

I've committed to running High Strung Saturday the 26th. Three ex- players are returning to the fold for this game, two of whom are musicians. It's going to be a day-long one shot - 12 hours of play with breaks for meals and dessert. I anticipate much hilarity and vicious undercutting!

So I have to get High Strung into playable shape. Flesh out the tables. Find a fun consequence for all the Nasty Cards. Make sure I've covered everything. This will be an Alpha test - I need to make sure everything I need is there. If something arises in play that's not covered, I have to improvise, and note it down - "Need a frazzen in case the PCs decide to janx the ribby." or "Forgot to include Smapping in the Crozen interactions! Need Done ASAP! Used averaging with Dasking - worked OK?" - which is what my development notes generally look like...

Restarting Beginner's Luck

Next Sunday, I am restarting my long running IRC StarCluster game, the Beginner's Luck. I started it in 2003, and this will be the 10th season. The game was started under the StarCluster 1E rules, shifted to 2E the next year, and is now running under StarCluster 3E rules.

Here are the logs from the first two seasons:

Season 1: http://www.flyingmice.com/Cry-in-the-Dark.pdf

This is the raw, unedited logs, put together into a pdf.

Season 2:  http://www.flyingmice.com/Beginner'sLuck.pdf

This is edited, with an intro, and comments after.