After Action Report

So another interesting night of Wild Talents. It looks like that this is going to be our last week running it for now (PCs are slavering for the new adventure path).

Observation from last night: How do you handle an off-kilt moral compass for the party?

Not to imply that the GM should be the behavior police for the party (unless it's somehow a factor in the story/characters), but what do you do when part of the party is clearly more ready for evil deeds than others in the party. Case in point - the group catches up with a set of individuals who have what they need. They overpower them and get the plot device. One of the players simply states, "Alright - we got what we need, space 'em." This was clearly not the intention of one of the players as he left out a shocked "BWA!?" and the group was then forced to re-work a plan of action or draw lines in the sand.

As the DM do you offer a set of non-lethal compromises? Do you just let the players fight it out? It was an interesting dilemma and luckily for me the PCs settled without resorting to murdering each other....for now..

Wild Talents - A review

A few days ago I posted up my first impression on the Wild Talents system, but I'd like to take a slightly more in-depth look at it now. For a basic overview, it's a superhero rpg based without a specific world setting.

Pros:
-simple core mechanic: The base mechanic is dice pool. You roll the applicable pool dice and match numbers. The higher the number matched equals a better success and the more times that number comes up the faster you succeed. See. In one sentence i've explained the core of the system. I hope I don't get yelled at for that.

-flexible character creation system: Although the book supplies a pre-made "miracle cafe" of powers and skills to use the player is free to build their abilities from the ground up through a point buy system. This allows the player the create any possible combination of powers.

-loyalty and passion: I have to give +1 point to any system that has motivations built in for character creation, so this system is no exception.

Cons:
-System flaws: Due to the way the system is built the player can take set dice to build up powers and skills. This means by spending a small amount in character creation gives the player the ability to set a power to always come in sets of 10. In short, the player can critical headshot with every attack action. Again, this is easily addressed during character creation between you and the players, but still it's a shame to see a built-in flaw in the system.

-flexible character creation system: See what I did there? The free-form building system can be a bit daunting for newer players or less advanced gamers.

-Poorly defined combat mechanics: Not a deal breaker for all players, but this system doesn't seem to easily fit a hack and slasher.


Overall, it's a good system but I don't see it replacing our weekly game system anytime soon. We will run a full campaign in it and it's a great exploration into a future-set 'super power' game.

New up on the PDF front

Just a reminder that part 2 of the Kingmaker series is now out (my copy is in the mail) and the PDF version will be out 4/28. More details here:

http://paizo.com/

Hooray for opening up the digital vein!

After Action Report

So last night we fired up our first session of Wild Talents. It was definitely a new experience for me as a DM. I tried two deliberate departures from my history of game running: mini-less gaming and a conscious move towards roll-lightplay.

The mini-less gameplay was fantastic. This is probably a non-event for people who have run games without miniatures to represent their characters, but the immersion and narrative levels amped up significantly. I was nervous trying this out, but it took no time to adjust. Of course I believe that Wild Talents lends itself very well to this kind of play, so that may have been a factor in adjusting to a blank surface in front of me and the players.

I was equally impressed by the roll-light gaming. Wild Talents (review pending) encourages only rolling during 1) combat 2) situations with a risk of failure OR 3) when time is an issue. Again, this was a big departure from the “d20” system where my players were asking to make repeated checks for skills and abilities. Now, as a DM, I could have very easily made this gameplay distinction in my d20-based gaming, but...well...I didn't. I found that players actually seek out rolling dice as much as possible in my d20 based games. They enjoyed the sense of snaking through cover while stopping and listening to the guards down the hall, rolling dice along the way.

Wrapping up, I can't say that every game I run from now on will be converted to minimal rolling and lots of descriptive words with gestures at a blank table, but I encourage DMs to try a session or two of this and see how their group responds. Maybe a scene where your party attends the ball and tries to impress the Duke or the day about town after putting the BBEG to the sword?

*cough* Testing.

Ahoy and welcome to Block Text. I hope to use this as a forum for my random DM related (or feasibly unrelated) thoughts.