Checking In...

Another day, another thing full of stress... but it's minor stress, so  it's okay.

I spoke with the player whom was most affected by the darkness I instigated in the Champions game this past Saturday. While I have a way to return him an untainted version of the character, he still has reservation about it, so he would like to bring a new character. It's totally understandable to me, and this is a mistake I will learn from. The idea I had, though, can be modified to bring in his new character *AND* lighten up the tone of the current campaign, so, it's still viable, and is going to be used.

Tomorrow will mark the 22nd anniversary of my marriage to the lovely, Loquacious one. We've been through a lot of things in our lives together, both good and bad, but I cannot think of another person I'd rather weather those storms or bask in the sunshine with. Loquacious is a large part of what made me who I am today, and I am all the better for it. Love you, sweetness... now and always.

-- GopherDave (a.k.a. The Dude)

Did That Just Really Happen..?

Okay... Last night was the second run of the Circle City Champions game I started a couple of weeks back. My general take on it was that if I had to take ANY game session back in my 35 years as a game master, last night's was it.

From what I gathered, no one was mad, and there very few (if any) hurt feelings over what happened during the session. So what went wrong? Based on a game situation, I took what is/was supposed to be a lighthearted game/genre and sent it to a *VERY* dark place. How dark? Take Law & Order: SVU and add a couple more shades of dark. As a result, for the first time ever, I rendered a character unplayable to his creator, and it resulted in PC suicide. The player (based on what he indicated) *IS* bringing in a different character.

I am not proud of where I took the game, as it added a layer of depression to what is supposed to be a fun activity. After the session, the players and I spoke about things a bit. Like I said, there are no hard feeling between the player and I, though I do feel a big heap of guilt. Anyway, speaking about things, knowing what I know about the villain in question, it made sense from what happened to have happened, and the players agreed with it to some degree. To be honest, the players pointed out that what has happened really gives the remaining PCs a reason to *HATE* the villain in question, once they discover who it is.

Still, all of this has me thinking about things a bit more in regard to the games I run. I'm finding more and more that as a GM (and a player) that I need to push the boundaries of what others find comfortable to explore characters and drama in a way that is interesting to me. Anymore, if my campaigns were to be made into a television series, they would be on Showtime or Cinemax because I will take things into dark and very adult subjects and situations.

For some games, that's not so bad, but for Champions/Superheroes it really creates a bummer vibe...

Time? What time...

Another day, another Friday...

We recently found out that we will have another game store opening up in town soon. From what we can tell, the projected opening is happening in about 3-5 weeks, but we have no idea where in town they will be. This will be part of a small chain of stores from the NW suburbs of Chi-Town. According to all accounts, it will be a company store, not a franchise, which means they can pour profits from five going stores into the store located here until it either succeeds or they determine that they are throwing good money after bad. Either way, it should be fun.

I was also supposed to work on game stuff last night, but ended up talking to a cousin I hadn't spoken to in about 15 years or so. It was good catching up, but it will probably be another decade or so before we talk again. We're two very different people with very little in common anymore besides kinship. It is what it is.

That all said, it also meant that I got exactly ZERO prep work done for the Champions game I am running Saturday night. With it being Friday, I will be here until about 3:30AM or so, and am scheduled to open at 11:00AM. So I could either sleep, or work on game stuff. Knowing me, I will probably try to work on game stuff and stay up until late Saturday night for I am stupid like that.

Go me!  =P

-- GopherDave

Drama Bombs...

Remember when I said last post that no news equals no drama? Yeah? Well, feh... There's another life theory shot all to hell...

Basically, the last few weeks have been filled with all kinds of drama ranging from financial to family, and it looks like more might be on the way. In between it all, I *DID* manage to start a Champions campaign...

The drama, I will not delve deeply into as it involves more than me, and several parties have said they are uncomfortable with me just blurting things out to the net even though I typically change names to protect, well, everybody but me. I understand it, and am trying to comply with it. I will say that the drama did involve Skribl and I making a 1100-mile round trip in about 19 hours to solve one of the issues in question.

As for the Champions campaign, that is fair game to discuss.

The Place

Indianapolis (a.k.a., the Circle City)

The Group

• The Fro - Smooth-talking 70's-based Black Sampson, except his hair grants him healing powers instead of strength.
• A.C.E. - The world's first extranormal, the Advanced Combat Entity is a cowboy-themed immortal, energy blaster.
• Torque - A bike-wrenching gearhead with the ability to be his own hydraulic lift.
• AKA - A hoodie and hockey mask-wearing mentalist that tries to stay out of direct battle and affect things from the fringes.
• Fahrenheit - Half-Jewish, half-Japanese temperature-based energy projector.

The Villains

• Groundpounder - A strongman so imbecilic his stupidity rubs off on those around him.
• Wraith - A ghostly assassin whose abilities let her affect the living.
• Slumber - An "energy projector" whose main abilities include draining people to exhaustion.
• Sledge - Another "energy projector" who flies and and fires chunks of "psionic concrete".
• Nameless Goons - Six, oddly armed regular goons who were hired for a job.

The Setting

A small pedestrian mall in the Broad Ripple area of town. One that has a coffee house, a comic-book shop, and a bank in it. It has other places as well, but we don't care about those.

Since this was the first run, I figured I'd just throw a basic fight at the group to sort of see what their combined abilities could do. The villains they faced were not very well coordinated, and pretty much operate as "lone gunman" and hired goons much of the time.

As it stood, the Goons tried to rob the bank while The Fro, Fahrenheit, and ACE were off getting coffee and AKA was working in his secret ID at the comic book store. Once alarms start going off, our intrepid heroes (and comic shop worker) go investigate. They find a group of normal, ski-mask wearing guys packing auto-fire "blasters" robbing the bank. As the fight begins, and normal goons begin going down, support arrives in the forms of Wraith, Groundpounder, and Slumber. Meanwhile, some near distance away, Torque spies Sledge going through the air in the direction of the fight (he's running late for his bit (stupid Unluck)). Soon, Sledge and Torque join the battle and it's on kind of like Donkey Kong.

I don't remember a ton of details, but I do remember that Slumber, Groundpounder, and Sledge got captured. All of the goons also got captured, but many more are heading to the hospital than to jail. There was a bit of interrogation with Slumber, who quickly ascertained that the hero group does not possess a detective among them. The heroes came to the conclusion that all of this (including the mix of villains) seemed somewhat random but didn't really understand why. Slumber theorized, and offered up this theory, that if one considered oneself a master villain and there was a new group of vigilantes in town than what better way to see what you are up against than to hire some random thugs to confront them.

That is where left it for the evening. Tonight, I will hopefully have time to plan Saturday's run. I have some ideas in mind and some missives to fire off to various players in the next day or so in order to set some things up.

-- GopherDave

No News Is No Drama...

Things are plugging along at the ol' Gopher hole... Sales are slower than I'd like, but that is just kind of what summer is like in retail in what is essentially a large college town.

Work proceeds apace on the Champions game. Once I post this, I have to fire off some e-mails, and then work on a couple of things. Now that I have some background from a few of the characters, I can start piecing some things together in regard to history. I have some things in mind that will be "public knowledge" and some things rattling around in my head that won't be. Whether or not the player's discover the hidden knowledge is entirely up to what direction we take the campaign.

Beyond that, life proceeds... I don't have much to say at the moment, but that's not all bad. It means the drama level is down...

-- GopherDave

Woof...

One... I know it's been a bit since I posted a picture, but it's been a nasty combination of hot and humid here the last couple of weeks, so I've been slumming it. Two, looking at this picture, I am beginning to realize that this is one of my favorite shirt/tie/sweater combinations. I wear it a lot compared to others. I'll have to watch that...

It's been a bit since I posted, so I thought I'd update some folks...

The Champions game is supposed to start tomorrow/later tonight (it is late as I'm writing this), but I have one player who still needs to build/finish his character. The player has a solid concept of what he wants to do, but he's new to the game system, and Champions Complete, for all it purports to be, is really kind of lacking in several areas (most notably examples). I will watch the store for the early part of the day, then try and sit down with him and get the mechanics for what he's trying to do knocked out.

I also am down yet another player. This brings the game to four. I originally wanted six players for the game, but given the experiment I was undertaking, having one guy drop out to bring the group to five was kind of a blessing. Now we are down to four. I have players waiting in the wings, but there is at least one of them that is not getting anywhere near my table again.

This player had played in one of my previous games and it was all I could do not to strangle him. On a personal level, this individual is not a bad person. Far from it, in fact. In game, though, this individual is the worst metagamer I have EVER encountered in 36+ years of role-playing. Frequently, there would be scenes that his character would have ZERO clue to know about and literally ZERO reason to be even be involved in, but this player would try to storm the scene with some bullshit reason and literally force the character FOR WHOM THE SCENE WAS WRITTEN/PLOTTED FOR out of the picture. I tried talking to him nicely... then firmly... then... I just gave up the game because he sucked the fun out for everybody else at the table, me included.

This is where being the store owner puts me in a precarious position. I do not want to alienate *ANYONE* from my store for any reason if I can help it. Blowing up at a person over a game tends to do that if one is in the position I am in. Thus, instead of tearing into the person like I would normally do (because subtlety and tact are not things I'm good at), I just sort of quietly put games on hiatus. It kind of sucks, but what can I do?

Like I said earlier, the player in question is not a bad person, just a frustrating player to have at a table. I have had many a great conversations with him outside of games, and honestly would love to keep doing so. In fact, he is trying to start up his own game, and if I were not participating in another game already, I'd probably play. Why, you might ask? Well, simply put, some of the things that make him frustrating to deal with as a player are actually pretty good qualities for a GM. I honestly think he would pretty damn good at the head of the table.

Anyway, I need to get going and finish some things for later. Part of me wishes I weren't running the store in the morning, but someone has to... C'est la vie... =P

-- GopherDave

Preliminaries...

Okay...

Got together with the play group on Saturday night to begin hashing out characters and setting/world info for the upcoming Champions campaign I'll be running.

The game will be set in modern-day Indianapolis, Indiana. Not the the first big city you think of, but definitely something I can work with. In addition to the various industries that we'll be creating for the game, Indianapolis is also the real-world home to Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and Dow AgroSciences, as well as a few others. Just those two companies alone already have got me coming up with some cool ideas.

Mechanically, one of the characters is fully done, and another needs to finish disadvantages/complications. The other three are under construction, with two of them being done by players fairly well-versed in HERO System, and the other being a complete newbie, but more than willing to read and learn.

I'm off to go work on stuff... have fun...

-- GopherDave