Post by Nestor on Jan 15, 2014 20:07:54 GMT -5
On Saturday the 11th, I ran "From The Ashes" for a Gameday being hosted by my FLGS. To prepare myself for my first time running a Prowlers & Paragons game, I playtested the adventure with my local gaming group the weekend before. I wanted to share how it went down for your amusement and commentary. Bear with me, it's a bit long and I'm so-so on the prose thing.
Requisite spoiler space for those who played the adventure and don't want advance knowledge.
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I used the Quickstart Heroes for my pre-generated characters, giving the players a wide choice of heroes to play. I modified the main NPCs (Lariat, Mobius and Kirlian), pumping them up and filling their stats out to make them a bit more of a challenge. I also created a fourth member of the gang, Champion, in case I ended up with more players. Champion is a pretty straightforward brick, with Leaping as his movement power.
For the playtest, I had four players, so Champ stayed in the sidelines. The heroes chosen were Devil's Advocate, Gatecrasher, Parthian and Stronghold. The DA player got into the whole "deal with the Devil" aspect, constantly recruiting defeated villains. The tag line for the evening became, "Do you offer dental?"
Oh, and a crowning moment of the evening was when I announced the Senator's name, Ignatius Percival Daily. The one player known for taking notes complained, "That's too long. I'm not writing that down." With a totally innocent tone, I advised, "Just use his initials." The player nodded, put pen to paper, then paused before looking up at me with a perfect "you gotta be kidding me" face.
Oh, and they got the joke about the villains' names right off the bat. Hilarity ensued.
The starting combat took longer than I expected, partially because I wanted the players to hash out the combat rules and my own inexperience with the system. The investigation phase went rather well, although I had to prompt one of the characters to suss out the Gary Arneson angle. I realized I need a better developed path in case the players totally miss that lead.
Getting down into the Deep Lab was easy; no clue needed. Stronghold just used his Machine Control to bypass the keypad.
The final combat in the Deep Lab was fun, with the players strutting their stuff and both sides producing comic moments in their attempts to take each other down. At one point Gatecrasher ripped up a section of flooring and trapped Kirlian with it, taunting him, "Try and get out of that!" Kirlian cooly replied, "Okay," and phased out. The look on the player was priceless.
When the self-destruct got activated, the heroes decided on the better part of valor and scrambled to the elevator, easily tearing through the blast door with the combined efforts of DA, Gatecrasher and Stronghold. While DA and Parthian clambered up the shaft with Stronghold flying and towing the elevator car behind him, Gatecrasher assisted by making a hole on the elevator floor and, with the assistance of a few Resolve points, using his Blast to help propel the car up.
This brings up a point. In the playtest, I found myself quickly out of Adversity points. The players were being suitably heroic (they even made sure to bring the defeated villains when escaping out of the lab), and there really wasn't much I could do to earn some on my own. Not sure if that was just the nature of the adventure, though (the NPC villains, for example, don't have any Motivation or Flaws defined). Perhaps a list of suitably villainous Motivations might help; I've got some ideas on the matter.
In the actual Gameday run, I ended up with five players, so Champion did get to strut his stuff, more or less. The heroes chosen were Devil's Advocate (again), Gatecrasher (again), Generator, Psidearm, and Stronghold (again).
This time the PCs were less motivated to interact with the Briefcase Boys and decided to confront the costumed villains directly, which meant I had to do some fancy juggling to keep the adventure from ending prematurely. I used Champion as an ace in the sleeve, jumping in to block DA from taking Lariat down. Even then, it was touch-and-go there for a bit.
I did get some Adversity points, as the heroes ignored the BBs' assault and pretty much bowled through the bystanders with wild abandon. The combat still took longer than I wanted; I need to come up with ways to streamline it without making it look like a railroad. There was also a scene where Psidearm decided to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" on one of the captured Boys.
Once again, Devil's Advocate was passing his business card around in his attempts to recruit the villains, at one point slipping one into a fleeing villain before they got away. The tag line for that run was Stronghold's repeated question, "You sure you're a good guy?"
In fact, this run I did end up with more Adversity points to play with, mostly due to DA's less-than-heroic actions; he as much as knocked Gary Arneson out when he tried to warn Montana.
When the heores arrived at Grubb Pharmaceutical to try to infiltrate the Deep Lab, rather than ignoring the janitor, they bribed him to take the night off. Again, getting past the keypad was no problem; Generator and Stronghold did a quick Rochambeau to figure out who got to do it.
The heroes quite conveniently split up once they got down there, which made the inevitable ambush a bit more interesting. When the countdown to destruction kicked off, a couple of the heroes tried to get out, but Generator and Stronghold decided to try and shut down the power plant, assisted by Gatecrasher. After some quick strategic discussion, Stronghold let three pages of the countdown go before making the attempt and rolled extremely well, stopping the meltdown with ease.
Perhaps it was the noise level in the game room, or the fact that the players were new to each other, but the group was not as interactive as the playtest group was, nor did they pick up on the in-jokes. They still said they had fun, and I made sure to point out the PnP website URL on their character sheets.
I'm pondering about digging through my game boxes for my old V&V and Champions books and see about converting some more adventures to PnP. Maybe even run a game at this year's GenCon.
Requisite spoiler space for those who played the adventure and don't want advance knowledge.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I used the Quickstart Heroes for my pre-generated characters, giving the players a wide choice of heroes to play. I modified the main NPCs (Lariat, Mobius and Kirlian), pumping them up and filling their stats out to make them a bit more of a challenge. I also created a fourth member of the gang, Champion, in case I ended up with more players. Champion is a pretty straightforward brick, with Leaping as his movement power.
For the playtest, I had four players, so Champ stayed in the sidelines. The heroes chosen were Devil's Advocate, Gatecrasher, Parthian and Stronghold. The DA player got into the whole "deal with the Devil" aspect, constantly recruiting defeated villains. The tag line for the evening became, "Do you offer dental?"
Oh, and a crowning moment of the evening was when I announced the Senator's name, Ignatius Percival Daily. The one player known for taking notes complained, "That's too long. I'm not writing that down." With a totally innocent tone, I advised, "Just use his initials." The player nodded, put pen to paper, then paused before looking up at me with a perfect "you gotta be kidding me" face.
Oh, and they got the joke about the villains' names right off the bat. Hilarity ensued.
The starting combat took longer than I expected, partially because I wanted the players to hash out the combat rules and my own inexperience with the system. The investigation phase went rather well, although I had to prompt one of the characters to suss out the Gary Arneson angle. I realized I need a better developed path in case the players totally miss that lead.
Getting down into the Deep Lab was easy; no clue needed. Stronghold just used his Machine Control to bypass the keypad.
The final combat in the Deep Lab was fun, with the players strutting their stuff and both sides producing comic moments in their attempts to take each other down. At one point Gatecrasher ripped up a section of flooring and trapped Kirlian with it, taunting him, "Try and get out of that!" Kirlian cooly replied, "Okay," and phased out. The look on the player was priceless.
When the self-destruct got activated, the heroes decided on the better part of valor and scrambled to the elevator, easily tearing through the blast door with the combined efforts of DA, Gatecrasher and Stronghold. While DA and Parthian clambered up the shaft with Stronghold flying and towing the elevator car behind him, Gatecrasher assisted by making a hole on the elevator floor and, with the assistance of a few Resolve points, using his Blast to help propel the car up.
This brings up a point. In the playtest, I found myself quickly out of Adversity points. The players were being suitably heroic (they even made sure to bring the defeated villains when escaping out of the lab), and there really wasn't much I could do to earn some on my own. Not sure if that was just the nature of the adventure, though (the NPC villains, for example, don't have any Motivation or Flaws defined). Perhaps a list of suitably villainous Motivations might help; I've got some ideas on the matter.
In the actual Gameday run, I ended up with five players, so Champion did get to strut his stuff, more or less. The heroes chosen were Devil's Advocate (again), Gatecrasher (again), Generator, Psidearm, and Stronghold (again).
This time the PCs were less motivated to interact with the Briefcase Boys and decided to confront the costumed villains directly, which meant I had to do some fancy juggling to keep the adventure from ending prematurely. I used Champion as an ace in the sleeve, jumping in to block DA from taking Lariat down. Even then, it was touch-and-go there for a bit.
I did get some Adversity points, as the heroes ignored the BBs' assault and pretty much bowled through the bystanders with wild abandon. The combat still took longer than I wanted; I need to come up with ways to streamline it without making it look like a railroad. There was also a scene where Psidearm decided to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" on one of the captured Boys.
Once again, Devil's Advocate was passing his business card around in his attempts to recruit the villains, at one point slipping one into a fleeing villain before they got away. The tag line for that run was Stronghold's repeated question, "You sure you're a good guy?"
In fact, this run I did end up with more Adversity points to play with, mostly due to DA's less-than-heroic actions; he as much as knocked Gary Arneson out when he tried to warn Montana.
When the heores arrived at Grubb Pharmaceutical to try to infiltrate the Deep Lab, rather than ignoring the janitor, they bribed him to take the night off. Again, getting past the keypad was no problem; Generator and Stronghold did a quick Rochambeau to figure out who got to do it.
The heroes quite conveniently split up once they got down there, which made the inevitable ambush a bit more interesting. When the countdown to destruction kicked off, a couple of the heroes tried to get out, but Generator and Stronghold decided to try and shut down the power plant, assisted by Gatecrasher. After some quick strategic discussion, Stronghold let three pages of the countdown go before making the attempt and rolled extremely well, stopping the meltdown with ease.
Perhaps it was the noise level in the game room, or the fact that the players were new to each other, but the group was not as interactive as the playtest group was, nor did they pick up on the in-jokes. They still said they had fun, and I made sure to point out the PnP website URL on their character sheets.
I'm pondering about digging through my game boxes for my old V&V and Champions books and see about converting some more adventures to PnP. Maybe even run a game at this year's GenCon.
