"The Vigilante Hack" is HACK-TASTIC!

Love the cover for starters.

Once again, it's been a while since blarging. All the usual reasons, so no need to dwell on that. What I wanted to talk about is a little game that has motivated me in a big way: "The Vigilante Hack" by Eric Bloat from Bloat Games.

"The Vigilante Hack" (TVH) is a small indie RPG based on "The Black Hack" (TBH) by David Black. I'd heard of TBH when it made its big splash a little more than a year-and-a-half ago, but I didn't pay it much mind. "Another retro-clone" was my thought. Then I heard some talk of its Usage Die mechanic, thought "neat", and still didn't pay it much mind,

Then a few months back, TVH dropped. I was taken immediately by the stark simplicity of the cover, which I found quite striking. Reading the description, I kinda went "eh". Though I liked the sound of it, at the same time I have plenty of Supers games, and this one didn't sound like it did anything new or different than the others (and to be honest, it really kinda doesn't), so I didn't check it out right away.

Apparently I just wasn't ready at the time, or the mood wasn't right, or whatever. But the exposure must have went in by brain and stuck there, waiting for the right moment. I got to thinking about getting a Supers game going again, as I often do, but couldn't settle on a particular game, a particular sub-genre or setting, etc, also as I often do. Then I remembered TVH and a little something clicked. I looked it up on DriveThruRPG, saw that A) it had been marked down to a measly two bucks, and B) that it already had support material by way of a GM's Guide, "A City Full of Sinners" (aCFoS), also two bucks. For $4, two books? Why not?

Another awesome cover.

For starters, they motivated me enough to post about them on several of my G+ groups recently. They've also continued to motivate me enough that I've been feverishly working for a few weeks on a couple of projects in preparation for a campaign. Finally, the fact that they motivated me enough to get off my butt and blarg about them at more length and examine WHY they've motivated me so much is obviously proof that I'm glad I gave them a chance.

On the surface, they're deceptively simple. A mere 37 pages for the core book! Another 37 for aCFoS. 74 pages combined. Just 10 pages more than the sixty-four pages of Moldvay's Basic D&D, which is a high point for me in lean, mean, succinct game design, so this is not a bad thing.

The rules are pure, old school, D&D stripped down to its core for task resolution and combat, and removing the clunky sub-systems, thus making a small, lean rule set even smaller and leaner, & streamlined even further, with a few innovations (like the aforementioned Usage Die) & modern flourishes (Advantage/Disadvantage a la 5e). This is also not a bad thing, as reading it reminded me of all the familiar things that I LIKE about old-school D&D, familiarity and ease of play being among them.

One of the areas I think the game really shines in is in its look, presentation, and style. It has a certain feel, a certain vibe about it that sells the premise of the game.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the premise of the game:

"The Vigilante Hack is not a superhero game. While yes, some vigilantes in The Vigilante Hack are considered heroes and some wear costumes, including capes and masks, there is nothing “super” about them. They have no X-ray vision. They cannot run faster than cars. They cannot leap buildings in a single bound and they are not bullet proof. The vigilantes in The Vigilante Hack are normal people, the same as you and I, who have become fed up with the lawless individuals, thugs, organized crime and villains and have decided to do something about it! They have trained hard, sometimes to the point of obsession, and have struck back at those very people who are ruining their city. Think Batman, not Superman. Think The Punisher, not Spider-Man. Think Batgirl not Wonder Woman. Being a vigilante can be a thankless and even deadly calling. You may get arrested. You may pick a fight that you can’t win. You may find yourself looking down the barrel of a villain’s gun or you may even cross the line of right and wrong and become the exact thing that you started out trying to stop."

If this is what you want, this is what the game delivers. And that's ALL it delivers. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, it does the one thing it does, and does it simply and well in a rules-lite package.

This was what set off the light bulb for me: I didn't want to play a SUPERS game, I apparently wanted to play a VIGILANTE game. A MASKED HERO game. A COSTUMED ADVENTURER or MYSTERY MEN game. Calling it a "Supers" game is really a misnomer.

And by narrowing the focus, I found this liberating. When contemplating a Supers game, I think I was overwhelmed by choice . By limiting the focus and saying "There are no superpowers. Everyone in this game is a regular human", I suddenly felt relieved. Even if I had attempted to play this kind of game with other rule sets, it would have felt like I was missing something, both because of how those games scale to handle superpowers, and just the fact in the back of my mind I would be aware that they're there. By saying "This is not what this game is about" it suddenly made me feel OKAY about it. It gave me permission to play this kind of game. By eliminating all other choices it set me free.

This is "Watchmen" without Dr. Manhattan. It's "Kick-Ass" by Mark Miller. It's the DCU if it only consisted of The Batman and Family, The Green Arrow and his related characters, and so on.

Again, this is not a bad thing. It seems to have resonated with me in some of the same ways that recent shows like "Daredevil" and "Arrow" have with viewers. It levels the playing field between the heroes and the criminals they will do battle with. Makes them more of a challenge. Suddenly the common street criminal or mobster seems like more of a threat. I like that. It also brings the genre back to its pulp adventurer roots in a way I also like.

So all that said, I've finished the two projects I was working on. The first was adapting a set of (hopefully easy to use) but very detailed Hand-to-Hand and Gunfire Charts to add flavor to (modern) d20 combat. The second I'm very excited about, as it's a project I've wanted to tackle for a while. It's an adaptation and expansion of various Patrol and Crime, charts, both published and online, to give a Patrol System for the types of situations a crime fighter would encounter on their nightly patrols.

With the completion of these, I'm ready to start my campaign! Speaking of which, next time I'll share the details of the campaign setting I've brainstormed thus far. I'd also like to share a few other Black Hack games, resources, and "Additional Things" that I'm adding to season TVH to taste.

Until then! 

Spring-ing Back Into (Superhero) Action!

My new crush

It's been a rough year for this Blarg-edy Blarg'er. Work upheaval & some (minor) poor health throughout the year didn't leave me with a lot of time. Or desire to "blarg" about gaming, or much of anything else. For a long while I didn't do, or even think about, anything gaming related.

BUT, as situations improved, I started thinking, then tinkering, & finally, feeling the urge to share my thoughts again! SO, here we are!

Oddly enough, it was just a little over a year ago that I made my LAST post here at the Blarg, on the same subject I'm tackling again: Superhero RPG'ing

One of the issues I'd been struggling with a bit in the past while working on the Super Hero Open World Sandbox Hexcrawl series of posts was which rule set to use. As I'd covered in a previous post I was a "Champions" man first, and then a "Marvel Superheroes" guy later. While I would be fine with running either, at the same time I still had issues with both. Still, my love for both REALLY made it difficult to entertain the thought of a new system.

But in this latest bout of spring-fueled mania, I decided to take the plunge. But which one? "Icons" , "Supers" , Capes, Cowls, and Villains Foul were among those that had my interest.

The Contenders

"Icons" in particular I'd looked over, and had things that left me cool towards it, despite the fact it seems to be the most popular of the new breed Supers RPG's of the rules lite variety. (Something about the "FATE" system just doesn't seem to click with me I think).

After reading up on all of them, I ended up settling on "BASH!" (as I'm sure you already figured out from the lead-in image at the beginning of this post...)

I'm still in the process of reading it, but so far my thoughts are: "Holy procrastination, Batman! Why did I wait so long?!?"

It's been out long enough that there are plenty of reviews that can do it better justice than I, (especially since, as I said, I'm still reading it), but I'll happily share what I'm digging about it thus far:

• Seems to nicely straddle the line between "Champions" and "MSH" in terms of rules, mechanics, and character creation, while addressing the issues I have with both.
• Has a really nice, simple universal task resolution mechanic, that still has enough crunch for me.
• The simplicity of character building should make modding or porting characters over a breeze, but again, with enough detail to satisfy. 
• Has a really nice mechanic for handling the power progression from Mook to Cosmic level, on such a small (mechanical) scale no less. It's not unlike the old "DC Heroes" RPG, but not as crunchy.
• VERY nice mechanics for making sure that all characters don't have to be built on the same point totals, yet characters of varying power levels are still "balanced out", which also eliminates the need to "make sure all the points are spent", and provides for cases when uneven/unspent point totals do occur.
• Nice and concise. 146 pages total, Rules and Powers covered in just 60 pages, the rest devoted to the GM's section, Settings, Example Characters aplenty, Alternate Rules, & the Index. This is a biggie for me, as I'm a big fan of the brevity of old-school rules like the original "Champions" or "B/X D&D".
• Speaking of Example Characters, they've got TONS of "comic book characters with the serial numbers filed off" stat'ed up in a sort of "blank template" format, so that you can either use them as those characters (if you chose to do so), as a starting point to mod that hero more to your liking, or especially as the starting point for your OWN character. Want to play a character "like" Spider-Man? Grab the "Swing-Line Skulk" template & then mod to your tastes!

  

  Why didn't somebody tell me he had one a' those, those...THINGS?!

• Finally,and this one was another big selling point for me, some REALLY nice Random Tables for Adventure Creation &/or Going on Patrol.  Like the rules themselves, brief, but detailed. You generate by Neighborhood (Slum, Downtown/Midtown, or Uptown/Suburbs) to get a Crime Type, then get a Specific Crime by that Type (Violent Crime, "regular" Crime, or "Routine Business". I'm a sucker for Random Tables, and HAVE a lot, but can always use more, and these weld together a couple of different approaches in a way I haven't exactly seen before, and like quite a bit.

If I had any one "complaint" it might be that I really wanted something that had BOTH Random AND Point-Buy Character Building. HOWEVER, as easy as character building IS in this game, it should be a SNAP to randomly generate characters in, say, Marvel for example, and then port them over!

So, overall I'm REALLY pleased thus far. Maybe now I can put all that prep last year to use!

YES!!!

Superhero Random Adventure Generators, Comic Book Adventures, Worlds In Peril, and more!

Random style!

It's spring, when apparently a "young" man's fancy turns to thoughts of superheroes again. In a previous post on Superhero Sandbox Hexcrawls I posted a number of links to some of the various random generators I've come across. You can still refer back to that post for a complete-ish list.

Be that as it may, I was going through my folder of them today and uploaded all of the ones that I find most useful to my Google Docs account so that I have easy access to them on all my devices.

Since I did this I thought it might be nice to go ahead and hand out links for them as well, so here are all of the free ones that I like the best:

City Dressing: Day

City Dressing: Night

Crime Scene: by A. Bigwood

Crime Table + Toolkit for Icons

DC Heroes RPG + Night In Gotham Patrol Table

Neighborhood Encounters

Random Encounters

Random Encounters by Ty States

River City Random Encounters

Random Events

Super Hero Random Adventure Tables

All of these are pretty much system agnostic, or can be made as such with very little effort. Some of these duplicate that aforementioned blog post, but I thought it would be nice to have them all together in one spot.

Speaking of random tables, I was reminded of a product I meant to check out in this post for solo supers gaming, Comic Book Adventures. 

Basically, it's a toolkit/guide book to allow you to run sessions of their Pathfinder supers game Heroes Wear Masks in conjunction with the various Comic Book Adventures Mission Books, as featured on the Core books page listed above.

I decided to splurge on the Core Book at least and get a feel for it/see how useful it is. I have mixed feelings on it. It's an interesting product and system. If one were to go all-in for HWM + the Mission Books I think you could have a lot of fun with it.

Outside of that however, its usefulness becomes somewhat more limited. It does however have a lot of neat random tables, and an interesting structure for patrols + adventures, creating your own comic book "issue". I would hesitantly recommend it if you keep in mind those limits and/or don't mind a bit of "kit bashing" to adapt it to your needs. I would strongly suggest using it with one or more of the above generators, as this product is really designed more to produce patrol or side missions, leading into your "main" missions (ie the Mission Books.

In the interests of completeness I'll go back & add these into the Superhero Sandbox Hexcrawl post as well for reference.

While I'm talking about Supers, my recent love affair with Monsterhearts turned me on to the Powered by the Apocalypse engine to the point I started looking into other games that use it. One that I picked up is Worlds In Peril

It's a beautiful, lavish, well written, colorful tome. Unfortunately it makes me crazy in a way that Monsterhearts never did with it's simple, clear, and concise writing. It takes what should be a simple system and makes it hard for me to understand.

Regardless, here is the thing that REALLY drew me to it: the way it handles Social Mechanics (a la Monsterhearts "Strings") in a way that is VERY thematically appropriate: Bonds. THIS blog's review describes them much better than I could have:

There are a few moves where Worlds in Peril really shines. First, lets talk about the Fit In move. Your relationships, called Bonds, can be used to boost dice rolls and represent how those NPCs will react to you. The Fit In roll is triggered when you spend time cultivating your Bonds: creating new ones or increasing the strength of existing Bonds. In addition, Fit In is the only move that allows you to recover from conditions that are inflicted on you. So dealing with your normal life is vital – it’s the primary way you ‘heal’.

I like this. A LOT. It puts me in the mind of Spider-Man/Aunt May, how he constantly draws on her for inspiration in tough circumstances, lets her down in his "real" life, then has to mend fences (again). And it does it in a mechanical, elegant way that weaves it into actual game play, not just lip service.

It's kinda like what Marvel Super Heroes was doing with Karma earned not only for Super stuff, but real life as well, but taken to the next level.

If I can't get my head around WiP better, I'm SERIOUSLY tempted to house rule this into Marvel in some way. Maybe all Kama earned for Super stuff goes into a "pot", which you only get to claim if you earn "civilian life" Karma? If you LOSE civilian life Karma you can't claim any earned Karma this session (thus forcing you to earn some civilian life Karma NEXT time)? I'd like something more elegant like the way WiP handles Bonds, but those are some quick thoughts for now.

Well, that's all for now. Until next time...

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players...And one man in his time plays many parts...

Thus Spaketh The Bard

While I was posting over at RPGGeek.com about my sessions of "Monsterhearts" that I ran over the past couple of weeks, I put into writing one of the thoughts that had been rolling around in my head about the experience:

I do have to say that once I got started I felt less like a player & more like a GM than usual. I felt like a director of a movie or stage play, and all the characters felt more like actors. I felt like I was staging the scenes & giving the actors some direction on where I wanted them to go and what I wanted them to do, & then it felt like "they" were taking it & running it.

Now, that said, I never felt completely divorced from the action, nor ever felt I wasn't in control of my character. I just felt like I was viewing the whole thing through a different lens, as it were.

So, I'm starting to think, in general, this might be a better way to look at Solo RPG'ing than my attempts at simulation, emulation, and "virtual reality", which I have discussed in the past.

I have achieved  this level of detail in the past, but the amount of work it takes can be exhausting, and I'm not quite sure that the amount of effort is equal to the reward (at least on a full time basis).

In these sessions of MH, what I was playing felt more like a TV Show, movie, or book, and less like "stepping into my character and living vicariously through them".

But I'm okay with that.

At some point perhaps you have to accept the limitation and conditions of the medium, and tailor your style of play, as well as your expectations, to meet them.

By framing and playing out scenes in a more cinematic, "only film when something interesting is happening"/"cut to the action" and less an attempt of trying to live the characters life, (as well as using a lighter, more story and narrative driven set of rules), the play may have been more fluid & dynamic, and at the least was just as engaging and entertaining as my previous efforts.

So, it may not be just the rules, tools, and so on, but how you frame and conduct your scenes, as well as your approach and mindset to what it is you're doing, and how you view it, that can  influence the feel of the finished product.

First "Episode" of Monsterhearts Complete

Yeah, alright, so it is kinda, sorta like this. So sue me...

So I just finished my first story arc of "Monsterhearts", my first foray into indie, STORY games. What follows are some of my thoughts.


It was a strange but fun experience for an OG (Old Gamer) like me. I had from old habit started bringing the mentality to the table of trying to do a bunch of prep, gathering tables and charts and such, and found very quickly that, in my opinion, the simulationist style approach that I'm used to DOES NOT WORK OR FIT IN THIS STYLE GAME. It felt much more "natural" and "real" to just "get in the moment" and start "Making Moves" (in game mechanics vocabulary), and let them set off "Chain Reactions" of other moves and see where it all went.


When I was running a solo D&D hexcrawl, I wanted to "live in the skin" of my character almost to the point of a "virtual reality" type experience, where I lived as much of the characters experience right down to the minutia of the weather, the terrain and scenery, overheard tavern and street conversations and so on.


As soon as I sat down to play this, I could see that approach wasn't going to work. With a design that is so STORY driven (and bordering on "cinematic") taking a more "TV or Movie" syle approach just felt right in terms of only "shooting" scenes where something INTERESTING was happening. (Whereas in the above example, EVERYTHING was interesting to me. I wanted to experience the whole WORLD).

Overall, it was an educational learning experience, but also an enjoyable one as well.

It was so loose and free flowing that it almost didn't feel like playing a game. It was (almost uncomfortably) close to "creative writing with dice" as some have called it. Still, there were JUST ENOUGH mechanical components to keep it within the realm of what constitutes a "game" by my standards, and I tried to let the Mythic GME and UNE Universal NPC Emulator run as much of the game as I could.


At first it felt like "cheating" until you realize that you're playing the game the way it was designed and doing what you're supposed to do: driving the narrative and story.


Which is not to say the GM emulator didn't provide me with plenty of twists & turns. Pretty much the entire story didn't unfold much of anything the way I expected.


It could be a fine line to walk with a game design like this between "just making it all up" and "playing the game", but I feel pretty good about the balance I achieved, and feel like now that I have a better grasp of how this type of game plays that I can do even better going forward.


ESPECIALLY if I'm more diligent about using the Mythic GME "by the book" insofar as actually filling out and using the sheets for "story threads", and filling out the worksheets for anther tool that I made some use of in these sessions that I was finally able to "click" with, and think really shone in this type of game: the Covetous Poets's Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook.


I've been wont to use these tools in a fairly loose and free form manor in the past, but feel like a more organized, methodical approach will yield more depth of story and even better results.


One good sign is that I kept wanting to get back to it because, like a good book, I wanted to see "what was going to happen next". And even though I just finished one story arc, there were plenty of unresolved hooks just waiting to be continued, and I'm already anxious to get another session going and see what else develops.

You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned...

That face you make when a Solo RPG session goes right...

Reading over, learning, and thinking about the game Monsterhearts as discussed in my last post has been a bit of a revelation. The big turning point has been an Actual Play video recommended to me by the ever excellent +Alex Yari...

The thing that REALLY stood out for me in this video is how spontaneous and improvised the game play is! How little prep appears to be needed. How all of the action and story is driven by player agency.

As an O.G. (Old Gamer) all of that runs contrary to my experience, which usually dictates having lots of material prepped to attempt to cover any contingency. I found myself drifting into this pattern of thinking, telling myself that I was planning on bringing "old school sensibilities to a new school game."

Hence the words of wisdom from the Jedi Master in the title. The above video was really illustrative to me of the difference in style of play, and how potentially freeing and liberating this could be.

The other thing that really hit me (and from what I see and know this is one of the hallmarks of new school indie games) was how the roles between players and GM have been reversed in some ways.

In old school games, the GM is the one who creates the story, tells the players what is happening, and so on. It's a proactive role. The players then are placed in a reactive role where they respond to what the GM tells them or does, rinse and repeat (perhaps an oversimplification here, but more or less).

What was really striking for me in the above video is how much the PLAYERS drove the story and wove the narrative, and how in many ways the GM role was more REACTIVE, asking lots of (leading) questions as a means to drive the story, rather than TELLING.

I'd heard this was the rap on newer indie design, but this made the whole concept "click" for me.

Of course this may all be irrelevant in Solo, as technically you're wearing all the hats to some extent(or emulating another hat wearer in others), but I think it's useful to understand the play style and how the game(s) function so that you know exactly what it is you're emulating.

Speaking of which, I have more thoughts on that, but I'll save them for next time. :) 

Ever Meet A Game That Just Speaks You?

Don't judge me...

Well, I'm back. Maybe. I guess. The time between Thanksgiving through New Year's/end of January generally suck for me. I tend to put all my projects on hold and generally go into lurker mode/ go dark online during those times, so apologies to anyone finding my digital doodlings interesting.

Speaking of going dark I've been looking over the usual suspects in terms of RPG'ing (all of whom I've discussed previously), considered different things for them, but nothing has been grabbing me.

Somehow, over the weekend, I ended up stumbling over Monsterhearts and giving it a closer look. I'd heard of the game before, but casually dismissed it both because of it's subject matter, and being labeled as a "story game".

Both of these turned out to be a mistake. Taking a closer look at this, it resonated with me, both in terms of theme, and mechanics. Looking at the Giving and Getting Threads on other characters mechanic, putting Conditions on each other and so on, I "got" Story Games in a way I haven't before.

Normally I'm a moderately rules crunch guy, with a very 80's pedigree in terms of actual games I like and styles of play. And even though this one is a very rules lite affair, I really like how it very mechanically codifies social interactions, which is what the game is all about. Plus the idea of a less mission/combat/objective oriented game and one that is more loose, improvised, free form, storytelling and drama oriented is just appealing to me at the moment.

SO, here I am, looking at attempting to run this thing Solo. Madness? Maybe. But as I mentioned in the title, it spoke to me. One thing I've noticed in my Solo RPG career thus far is that I seem to like solving problems to challenges of things that "can't be done" in Solo. Thus, here I am contemplating running a story game that thrives on social dynamics and interaction as a solo. *lol*

I've improvised a few off the cuff scenes, (just picking a couple characters, a setting, a situation and GO), bouncing interactions off my favorite tools for that very thing: The Mythic Game Master Emulator and UNE Universal NPC Emulator and very satisfactory results, so I'm convinced that my mental proof-of-concept on how I'd like to approach this is valid.

In the meantime, I've been furiously scribbling "keyword" style hooks of just ideas, themes, and so on. Gathering Skins and materials. Listening to and reading Actual Plays and Session Reports. Just getting into the "mood".

I have a lot more to say on the subject, but I'll save that for later as I've got the time and opportunity and enthusiasm to do some prep right now!