Tag Archive for BASH

Exploding Criminals

Deep One / 2011/02/11 / 2 comments

Last night, we played Bearded Dork‘s new Supers game.

IT. WAS. SPECTACULAR.

Seriously, I’d put it on the same scale as a Gaming Legend Jay Peters BASH game. It was fun, fast paced, internally consistant and all around one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a while.

There was some lead in, where Adrenaline Joe learned that he could, in fact, accidentally kill a man by punching them. There was a villain who beat the crap out of me. There was a gas main on fire, and some power stunting. The best part, of course, was when I managed to beat up the villain to the point of unconsciousness. Twice. And he still got up. He’d warned me earlier not to try and stop him, because he’d just blow the building up with everyone inside. I didn’t believe him. Until he did. His superpower? Blowing himself up. Also, killing me (170 hits! 70% more than dead!).


The body count was HUGE. Joe only survived by having Never Surrender. (I’d burned through all of my other advantages, hero points and hero dice beforehand.) Bear in mind that Adrenaline Joe is a comic book nut, and to his way of thinking, heros should save people. Now, because of his direct action, dozens of people are dead. This is not good. Joe does not especially care for anti heros. He literally spent most of the night asking himself what Captain America would do. In fact, he went deeper into the building as it was collapsing to save an unconscious thug who had earlier been involved in shooting at me.

We’ll see if he can live up to that standard…

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: ,

Meet Adrenaline Joe

Deep One / 2011/02/10 / One comment

Adrenaline Joe was created for Bearded Dork‘s new Thursday Night BASH game. The Greek Age of Heros campaign was awesome, but he thought that it was a little too much like fantasy gaming. So, we’re switching over to a more superhero themed game.

Set in a world much like ours, except, apparently, superheros have started to emerge. They’re a new thing, with no real precedent (at least that anyone is aware of). Joe is a man who grew up as a total D&D playing, phyiscs club president nerd. After his parents died in a car wreck, he dropped out of MIT to take care of his brother, Aaron. Now, though, anytime his adrenal system kicks in, it’s almost like he has super powers. Time seems to slow down, and he’s stronger and faster. This, to him, is possibly the coolest thing ever…

A character for BASH

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Age of Heros

Deep One / 2010/12/16 / No comments

The Bearded Dork’s Greek age of heros BASH game starts up tonight. I’m excited. I’ll be playing Nicus, the grandson of Dionysus (God of booze and other stuff). His powers revolve around impeding others, rather than directly harming them.

I also went with some healing, though the activation limitation means that it won’t always work. It’s the fickle nature of the drunk, I suppose.
Nicus' Character Sheet

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: ,

Still Gaming

Deep One / 2010/12/07 / One comment

Judging by blog posts, I’ve stopped gaming entirely. Not the case! In fact, now that TRANSLUNAR is done, I’ll be talking about gaming much more often. Case in point – here’s what’s going on in my gaming world right now!

Thursdays is still BASH night. The game I was running imploded due to a combination of skipped games, note loss, and me generally being way too busy. But, Bearded Dork is going to run a Greek age of heros game! I’ll be playing the grandson of Dionysus, with powers based around slowing/hindering/generally annoying the crap out of foes. Look for stats later this week! I have no idea how long he plans on running this, as we have a few potential new players moving to town late this month. But it’ll be fun while it lasts, I’m sure.

Sundays were d20 Modern, but that game died because the GM’s two year old son was problematic. His mom was also in the game, and she had to devote most of her time to taking care of him. This was not optimal. When both parents were available, it wasn’t an issue (much). So, my partner has agreed to run a Pathfinder game! In which I’ll be playing a pacifist paladin. Expect many posts about the fun of trying to stop the mindless slaughter.

Monday nights is still the Rise of the Runelords. I’ve died about a million times in that game, and am currently playing Timmy, the six year old homicidal maniac. Seriously, Timmy’s adoptive father is encouraging him to skin his enemies and make clothing out of them. This will go well with the magic mask made of human flesh he wears.

This is just a smattering of what’s going on, as I have time I’ll be posting more info. Also, stuff about comics and movies and shit like that.

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: , ,

Gaming Report: A Little Knowledge #1

Deep One / 2010/10/02 / No comments

So, I got suckered into running a BASH game. That’s actually neither fair nor true. I volunteered to save our Thursday night game. Thursday is a new blood night, meaning I’m playing with people I that I haven’t been playing with for 10+ years. This is a good thing, mainly because new players tend to surprise me and reinvigorate my interest in gaming.

Two weeks ago, while delightfully sleep deprived, I pitched the game and everybody made characters. I decided to do 20 point builds, with an additional 10 points after creation (this info I kept to myself, because I wanted characters close to Mystery Men level). Basic concept: Space Pulp! I’m basing the campaign on a book by Warren Ellis called Ignition City. Originally a 5 issue series, I fell in instant love with it.

(On a related note, YOU SHOULD GO BUY IT RIGHT NOW! If sales go up, maybe Warren will notice that people are buying it because of me, and then I can finally live out my dream of having Warren Ellis put his disease in me…)

The game is taking place about three days after the events of the book. For those not in the know, humanity is getting the hell out of space, because it’s scary and dangerous and aliens keep trying to kill/enslave all of humanity. The big bad villain was Kharg the Killer, an homage to Ming the Merciless of Flash Gordon fame. The comic reveals that Kharg was secretly captured and kept by the managers of the Earth’s last remaining spaceport, presumably to somehow make money off his knowledge. It’s a dark (though not Iron Age of Comics dark…) setting, where death is possible, and very messy. Grounded spacemen drink, swear, and try and figure out how to get the hell back into space. A PDF of the write up I gave players can be found here.

So, we ended up with two psychics, Buffy the Alien Slayer (literally), and Dumbass the guy in power armor. There’s a joke there, somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet. The psychics are built differently enough that I don’t think that there will be a problem, which is good.

The first issue went pretty well. I’ve said before that I’m a fan of starting the game in media res (in the middle of the action), but I didn’t go quite that route. We started at a meeting, discussing organizing the settlement into a real, rule of law kind of town. Marshal Mary Raven (the star of the comics), as well as the other big characters were there. Some bits of information were dropped, but the players don’t have context for them yet.

And of course, five minutes into the game, aliens attack.

Marshal Raven immediately deputizes the people who don’t run screaming. (It turns out that the only people who didn’t run screaming were the PCs. Weird.) There are a bunch of aliens in armor dropping into the streets, and OMFG a fucking alien starfighter that could kill everyone.

The fighter was there to keep Dumbass busy. His build is powerful, enough so that I felt comfortable sending an alien space fighter into single combat with him. They duke it out, and he beats it by being clever, eventually pulling the canopy off and throwing the pilot at the ground commander.

The ground troops advance, and the players on the ground engage. It’s a tough fight, but I have a lot of NPCs around to equalize things. Buffy learns to her regret that having a soak multiplier of 1 really sucks if you’re shot by an energy rifle. One of the psychics (I feel really bad that I can’t remember their character names right now) makes excellent use of his Confusion powers, while the other uses Telekinesis when no one is looking (he’s On The Run). Things look grim, then things get better.

Oh, remember that starfighter? The one with no pilot? Yeah, it starts to crash. Power stunting Telekinesis of his own, one of the psychics points it at the sky. Which means the engine exhaust washes over the pilot and the ground commander, killing them instantly. Things wrap up, and the PCs realize that the ship that launched the assault is being shot down.

We take a break, and I mention that if people want to do a minor rebuild, that would be okay. This is the first time that many of the players have built BASH characters (previously, we were using sample characters and other pre-gens), so I wanted to make sure that everyone was happy with what they had. Buffy traded out some of her stuff for Armor, a wise decision, I think.

A few hours of game time later (to give poor Buffy some time to heal), the PCs are off investigating the crash. They figure that Kharg has escaped, and is trying to get off planet. They track him to a small trading ship that has just been refueled. The fight is on! Many attempts are made to keep the ship from launching, all somewhat futile in the end.

Bearded Dork has some excellent analysis of the game, as well as his solution to his own perceived problem. Everyone seemed to have a good time, so I guess it went well.

And it turns out that gaming legend Jay Peters might want to come and play with us. Fuck yeah! One mention by him and I’m Internet famous!

Update: It occurs to me that hardcore fans of Ignition City might point out some things that aren’t in cannon that do show up in these posts. Well, you can feel free to do that. And I’ll feel free to gun fuck you. I’m taking liberties so that players can have a good time, and a lot of shit was never really described in any detail in the books.

Ads now covered, I’m gonna go get me some dinner.

Category: Campaign Design, Gaming Report / Tags: , , , ,

From The Shadow Of The Bat: Report 3 (Goodnight, Gracie Edition)

Deep One / 2010/09/17 / No comments

So, the Bearded Dork has been running this game and it has kicked much ass. We finally got to talk to the Scarecrow, and he pointed us in the direction of the villain who had been pulling all the strings.

Talia al Ghul. Member of the League of Assassins. Mother of Damian Wayne (who we put in jail). Flying out of the country in six hours. Epic.

We tried to approach her politely, but as heros, we kind of suck. She rapidly determines that we’re messing with the Plan. She gets her goons to attack, and starts monologuing. (In BASH, when the villains tell you their plan cannot fail, DO NOT HIT THEM. They get harder to take down if they talk, but they get WAY harder to take down if you interrupt.)

BAM! BIFF! POW! The fight goes on. We’re down Animalia (player had to work), so it’s three versus four goons and Talia. The fight keeps going. We eventually take out the goons, but Talia is some sort of stabbing fiend. First, the Renaissance Man goes down. It’s okay, we’re close to taking her. Then I go down. Then the Stranger. Bad dice on our part, good dice on hers.

Sadly, we’re done with this game. The Bearded Dork has some bad shit going on in his life, and we’re a respecting bunch of players, so we all are okay with it. It’d have been nice to stop the Evil Plan™, but sometimes the bad guys win.

We all learned a lot playing this one, and I’ll do a post later about that. I don’t tend to believe in the power of positive thinking, but if you want, think good things for my friend.

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: , ,

Some Things I Haven’t Addressed Yet

Deep One / 2010/09/13 / No comments

Namely, the fact that I haven’t figured out how to handle character advancement yet.

BASH is fairly unique in that the core rules do not allow for character advancement. The argument goes like this: Superheros are static. The rarely change their core abilities and powers. For example, Scott Summers shoots lasers from his eyes. And whines a lot. This has never changed. Occasionally, a super gets better somehow, but it’s either temporary (as in the case of Spiderman with the Captain Universe powers) or at the end of an origin story, which doesn’t really count.

And I’m having a hell of a time wrapping my head around that.

Gaming has always had some sort of advancement. XP in various forms of D&D, Karma in Shadowrun, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I try real hard not to simply do something because it’s traditional, but as innovative as it is to just abandon getting better, I’m having a hard time with it.

Of course, the game does have a system for dealing with overpowering foes. Give them extra hero points (which can be used to add to dice rolls, and for other stuff). But that doesn’t really inspire me. There is an optional rule(!) for experience points, which I’ll probably use.

It works in one of two ways. First, XP is awarded at the end of every issue (game session). This is pretty traditional for RPGs. The other method is more complicated, but cooler. Hero points are awarded to players for doing something cool. In the second system, for every five hero points you earn, you get one experience point.

This means that characters will advance at different rates. If player 1 is constantly doing cool shit, they will naturally get more XP than player A, who isn’t as proactive.

And as I think about it, that’s what I want to see happen. This is a game about doing the right thing, self-sacrifice, and eventually, saving the world and shit. Fuck being fair.

What We Learned Today

Being fair isn’t that important. Also, a game without character advancement is weird.

Next Up: More of Act 1

Category: Campaign Design / Tags: ,

From The Shadow Of The Bat: Report 2

Deep One / 2010/09/03 / No comments

So, we fought Mr. Freeze. It hurt.

We had left off in the basement, but this week started with the elevator doors opening (a fact I didn’t notice until I read about it at Bearded Dork’s site). What followed was a long, inside joke about Paizo’s boxed text. We got a long description of the hallway, including all sorts of crap. Oh, and by the way, there are a bunch of Freeze’s henchmen there. Of course, we could see them on the map for the whole of the description.

Here, I discovered that the flying bodyslam (aka “bowling for mooks”) is a great tactic. We then went into the room with the man himself. The fight went on… and on… and on. His armor and natural toughness made hurting him really hard. I spontaneously developed Boost (a power that let me do more damage when I was launching myself at him like a cannonball) by burning a communal hero die, Freeze being powerful enough to give us 11 extra hero points to spend against him.

Now, the thing about bowling for mooks, if they decide to stand their ground, and manage to not be affected by the damage, the one doing the bowling takes damage. I hurt myself trying to fight Freeze. A lot.

We managed to get his cold gun out of his hands, and I used my gravity powers to keep it away from him. The fight went outside, and after one more unsuccessful dive bomb attempt, it was time for a new plan. Freeze was hauling some papers with him, so I tried to manipulate gravity to steal them. Wonder of wonders, it worked.

Then Freeze thew the Renaissance Man at me. I was 30 feet in the air at the time. We were hurting. I was seriously considering running (with the villain’s goal and gun in my hand) or offering to trade the papers for our lives when Lady Luck finally sided with us. Freeze went down.

We still have no idea what’s going on, overall, but now we have what turns out to be Dr. Victor Fries’ original cryogenic research. Oh, and we’re turning him over to Arkham, on the condition they let us talk to the Scarecrow.

Take that, world class villain!

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: ,

Getting Specific: Act 1 – Issue 1

Deep One / 2010/08/30 / No comments

In the old West End Games version of the Star Wars RPG, they suggested that you start the game in media res. Thats a fancy Latin term for “beginning in the middle of things.” Episode IV of Star Wars is a great example — there’s this space battle, you have no idea what’s going on, and people are dying. It’s a great way to kick things off in a game.

The downside, is, of course, that players want to know why they’re fighting stormtroopers, or radioactive mutants, or whatever. This can bog down a good first scene. If you take it a step further, though, and start at the end of the action, things get interesting.

GM: You find yourselves standing over a pile of gangbangers. Most of you have blood on your hands. No one still standing has any significant injuries. You can all hear sirens approaching. What do you do?

IGNORE THIS TEXT

Neat! It doesn’t matter if the players know each other, or what. They have a common problem, and they are literally catapulted into the action.

It works better if you have a little write-up for each character that explains how they got into the situation in the first place. That way, when things settle down, they can quite literally compare notes.

The big problem, writing this, is that I have little idea of what people are wanting to play. Hell, I haven’t even picked who is getting invites to this game. The only tentative concept I’ve even heard of is “the only honest cop in New Orleans.” Which is an awesome concept, and if he gets invited, and plays that, I have a great hook for it. I’m currently going with the idea that everyone should be a social worker type (or low level government employee, etc), but that may change.

So, issue 1 is going to be a “meet the people” thing. (BASH calls each game session an issue. It’s a superhero game.) Since the write-ups everyone has will make it clear that they were acting in self defense, I’m envisioning one of two scenarios:

  1. Someone is playing a cop: The cop convinces everyone to stick around and make statements. After doing so, they all get sat down by a plainclothes detective and warned that they’ve “pissed off the ‘gators.” (The ‘gators being the provisional name of the Deep One gang.) He’ll warn the PCs that they are likely to be targets of retaliation (and the cop will know enough to back this up).
  2. No one is playing a cop: They either stick around and I use scenario 1, or they bolt, and hide out somewhere. (I’ll make sure there is a bar/coffee shop/something near by.) While there, someone gets a call, asking why “you’ve pissed off the ‘gators. They’re dangerous!” Maybe others will get similar calls, and with cursory checking, it’ll be clear that the ‘gators will probably retaliate somehow.

Now, everyone knows that they’re targets, they can start digging and planning. I expect some research to be done, and folks can find out that the people they messed with were new recruits. Also, that the gang is currently based in the Bywater neighborhood (a relatively unsafe area), and new to town. Depending on the make-up of the party, they may also discover that though they are new, they have pushed out a lot of the other organizations in their neighborhood, that they are well funded, and that they have a lot of cops on the payroll.

That last bit is pretty crucial. Assuming that the PCs are moving around to do this research, they’ll have the opportunity to notice a large number of police cruisers. Even if they’re sticking to one location, they’ll have the chance to notice the po-po cruising by outside too often.

Then, the police surveillance will stop. That’s when some non-recruit ‘gators show up.

A pack of bruisers (see the BASH rulebook) will show up, wherever the PCs are, to show them the error of their ways. These guys are lead by an actual Deep One/Human Hybrid (more on them later). They’re not out to kill the PCs (yet), but to send a message. That message consists of “Fuck with us and watch your health insurance premiums go up.”

Stats for the bruisers and their Deep One gang boss are here. I shan’t explain how the mechanics work, you’ll have to buy the book for that.

Bruisers 7pts
B2 A1 M1
20 Hits/10 Soak (20 Soak vs. Unarmed)
Attack 14 Defend 7
Martial Arts Mastery 1: Tough Style; Unarmed Technique 2
(+1Hit, +1DM).
Punch (x3 Dmg), Two-By-Four (x2+10 Dmg)

Deep One Gang Sub-Boss 10pts
B2 A1 M1
30 Hits/10 Soak (20 Soak vs. Unarmed)
Attack 14 Defend 7
Super Swimming 1; Immunity (Drowning); Martial Arts Mastery 1: Tough Style; Unarmed Technique 2
(+1Hit, +1DM).
Punch (x3 Dmg), Lead Pipe (x2+10 Dmg)

I’ll set the number of mooks when I know more about the party. The important thing here is to make sure that the players know that they’re all being targeted by the gang. Also, a fight is a good point to call the game. We tend to play short (4 hour or so) sessions, so after the research and the fight, it’ll likely be time to call it.

What We Learned Today

Literary techniques can be used to your advantage as a GM. The first “adventure” is probably going to be spent establishing characters. Beat your players over the head with the notion that they’re all in this together.

Next Up: Some Things I Haven’t Addressed Yet

Category: Campaign Design / Tags: , , ,

From The Shadow Of The Bat: Report 1

Deep One / 2010/08/27 / 2 comments

Bearded Dork is running a BASH game, set in Gotham City after the death of Batman. We’re three games in (of which I missed one, sad panda), and so far everyone at least seems to be having a really good time. So far, we’ve had to deal with a mind controlled Robin, The Mad Hatter, and now we’re working up to the big time.

Enter last night. After fighting a bunch of armed henchmen, much of our little team was in sore need of a rest. However, after we had waded through the henchmen, we found the Mad Hatter…tied up in a warehouse breakroom? WTF?

Talking to him, it was apparent that he was crazy. More crazy than usual, anyway. He seemed to have a phobia of, well, everything, as well as some recent track marks. As a player, I immediately suspected the Scarecrow, but as a character who happens to be a theoretical physicist (whose gravity research turned out to have some practical crime fighting applications) I was stumped.

We took a day off, in part to heal our wounds, and in part to do a bit of investigation. Animalia (another character) happens to be damn good with computers, and figured out that the henchmen we fought had been globally active, usually in an eco-terrorist role. This was starting to make less and less sense. Nothing ecological has happened (yet), and Dr. Jonathan Crane (aka the Scarecrow) is not known to be an eco-villian. Or even to share his research (which, to a character who is a dedicated scientist, is a greater crime than the various murders he has committed).

And then, we get the packages.

Turns out that Oracle (a really, really smart and well connected woman) sees us as “the only game in town” after the death of Batman. She’s willing to help us out with her vast ability to get information. To me, this was the night’s weak point. It seemed like too much of a good thing. Oracle can basically find out anything, and I have a suspicion that we’re going to need to do a lot of our own digging to get to the bottom of this. I fear that having a hotline to the chick who functionally knows everything is going to make us lazy players.

Anyway, we fill her in on what we know, and she identifies the henchmen as probably members of Ras al Ghul’s League of Assassins, and confirms that they are primarily eco-terrorists. She hypothesizes that the Mad Hatter was under the effects of the Scarecrow’s fear toxins, but also that the Scarecrow is still locked up. To figure out what’s going on there, we’ll either need to break him out and talk to him, or break in and talk to him. Fortunately, we’re not crazy enough to let him loose.

Coincidently, Oracle lets us know that there seems to be a break out happening at Arkham Asylum RIGHT NOW.

Since Freefall (the character I’m playing) can fly, I haul ass over there. We’re too late to stop the breakout, but now we at least know who got out. And it’s Mr. Freeze. You know, world class villain Mr. Freeze. Way, way out of our league. But, we hero on.

Flying high, I manage to analyze the traffic patterns and roads blocked for construction to map the probable route that Mr. Freeze took. We figure that he’s in a refrigerated truck, since he doesn’t have his suit. I manage to find the truck, and Animalia (who is cat-like) tracks the occupants by scent.

We make it to a hole cut in the floor of a building, leading to some sort of access tunnel. I get shot at by the token guard. Everyone is nervous, because mooks kicked our asses last time, so we proceed with caution, though it turns out that Freeze uses a much less dangerous mook than whoever poisoned the Mad Hatter. Everyone gets to feel useful in the fight, and I test out my new gravatic manipulators (they act an awful lot like telekinesis). It turns out that the beta version of the manipulators are not so great for combat. Being a gadgeteer, I’ll tinker with them when I have time.

After dealing with a lot of mooks, we finally find out that we’re under the University. There’s an elevator, which presumably leads to Mr. Freeze and our untimely demise. We called it there.

Overall, it was a lot of fun. Someone is obviously manipulating these people, and I’m not sure who it is yet, or what their plan could possibly be. I’ll have fun finding out, though. If you want a more concise, GM version of events, check out Bearded Dork’s review of the game.

Category: Gaming Report / Tags: ,
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