Games of Future Past / Planning my next game

I'm running a successful campaign at the moment, which obviously means that I'm thinking about what I want to run next.

I've been toying with a few plot ideas and potential settings for different games for awhile now, and suddenly have hope that I'll be able to run them.

I'm probably getting a bit giddy...

The games are:

Trail of Cthulhu
The first Gumshoe game I bought, and a work of beautiful genius. It successfully evokes multiple interpretations of Lovecraft's work, from the pulp two fisted tales of dark adventure to the doomed and weak minded soul not long for this world with the tenacious and fearful academic somewhere in between.
I have an idea for a game that draws upon The Mountains of Madness and Call of Cthulhu for mood and theme and a real life lost Arctic expedition for setting. I've already started mentally mapping out this idea. It's a strong contender.

Trinity
Originally released as Aeon and soon to be re-released under that name, Trinity is the game from the Aeon Trilogy that I have played the least and have the most books for.
I think I ran a short one shot game for two players back in 2001/2.
It's a game that deserves another crack of the whip - a mix of epic sci-fi, space opera, cyberpunk, post apocalyptic wasteland, Starship Troopers, intrigue and horror. You can set the equalisers to any level you want just by varying the locations and organisations involved.
I'd run a vanilla Aeon Trinity game with a mix of investigation, combat and political manoeuvring.

Hunter: the Vigil
I think of all the World of Darkness games, H:tV has the broadest appeal. Used to playing the monsters in the other games? Have fun playing the other side for once. Never played a WoD game before? Here's a no nonsense gateway to the setting. Not sure about playing a monster? Play a legit human instead.
I was running a nWoD cops game when Hunter: the Vigil announced, and it quickly became apparent that I was running a proto hunter game.
When I finally got it I ran a short introductory story arc for my gaming group, then promptly got my wife pregnant again so had to scale back my gaming for awhile.
I've still got a load of unused ideas that I'd like to try out, and my wife bought me the Compacts & Conspiracies splatbook for my birthday, so it's fresh in my mind.

Ars Magica
My first gaming love. The second game I ever played, the first game I ran. Over the years I've built up and lost a sizable ArM library. I had about 20+ books for 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition, some of which are probably worth a bit of money now, and stupidly gave them all away to charity when the 5th edition came out. To make matters worse, 5th edition wasn't what I wanted it to be, and I gave up on it.
A few years and a bit of perspective later I realised that I wasn't giving it a chance. Different doesn't mean bad. And it couldn't be as much of a disappointment as Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition.
So I'd like to run Ars Magica again.

Changeling: the Lost
Look, this game is fucking brilliant. Really. It's the most well rounded game that White Wolf has ever produced. It's beautiful, horrific, terrifying, paranoid, innocent, brave, redemptive and compelling. It's everything good about folk tales and myths and everything good about modern horror.
It's the best Slender Man pictures meets Pan's Labyrinth meets The Evil Dead.
As I see it, Changeling: the Lost is a game about self discovery and personal agency - freed slaves learning that they can do anything they want, and trying to work out what that actually is, whilst fighting to preserve that freedom.

Mage: the Awakening/Mage Noir
It's hard to get a grip on Mage: the Awakening, to definitively say "this is what the game is about", especially when compared to its predecessor, Mage: the Ascension.
In Ascension it was explicit within the setting that you were caught up in an ideological, metaphysical war with clearly defined sides and an achievable goal. Awakening lacks this direction and forces the players to determine what they want to do and who they have to fight to do it.
The rules are great though. They allow the player characters to bend reality to their will and do a truly impressive range of miracle working.
If running Mage: the Awakening I'd use the Mage Noir setting and play in post war America, late 40s to early 50s, with the players hunting down magical artifacts like an arcane Maltese Falcon.

Pathfinder
Every now and then I have an urge to run a good old fashioned high fantasy dungeon bash.
So far I've primarily used Pathfinder to run Goblin games, because Goblins are ace. The Goblin games I've run so far have been independent of each other but set in the same game world, so the events of the first game (slaughtering a farmer and his family, burning their house down and eating the livestock) informed the second (humans try to drive the Goblins out of the area, Goblins retaliate by setting fire to what they think is a religious monument but is in fact a signal beacon) and the second will inform the third (possible war due to the sudden amassing of an army after an invasion has been signaled).
In every game, though, the players have basically been looking for food and tribal status.

Hunter Advanced Armory / Gungnir Sentry Gun

One of the things that struck me about Task Force: VALKYRIE from Hunter: the Vigil is that for all of the high-tech military equipment they have, it all still relies on a functioning human being to use (fire) it.
Now, TF:V has been in existence since the assassination of Lincoln, and has worked up a database of not inconsiderable knowledge on "extra-normal entities", yet
I've not seen anything within their Advanced Armory that acquiesces to the fact that some ENEs can disable an operative just by being in the same room as them.
I'm thinking of Werewolf induced Lunacy, as well as Vampiric Dominate, Majesty and Nightmare, and a Mages Mind Arcanum. Any of these supernatural effects can remove an agent from the fight before they've fired a round, and allow the ENE entry and egress without effective opposition.

My solution? The automated Sentry Guns from Aliens Special Edition. TF:V have the technology to create these, easily.

Gungnir Automated Sentry Gun (00000)
The Gungnir Automated Sentry Gun is an automated machine gun post that can provide fire over a full 180 degrees from its front position.
It uses the Gungnir System to identify and target ENEs, and will fire automatically on any identified.
The system can be operated remotely from a distance of up to one mile, or set to automatic fire. It will only fire upon recognised ENEs, allowing it, in theory, to provide support to TF:V operatives during an encounter.
It is more commonly used to guard strategic positions and field base of operations.
The system itself has helped TF:V teams survive encounters that have disabled agents from a distance, as most ENEs presume they need only deal with the humans present.
The same safeguards present in the portable gun-mounted Gungnir system can cause issues for TF:V agents when using the Sentry Guns, as the servants of monsters - cultists, Slashers, retainers etc - can essentially walk up and knock without being fired upon.
The mounted gun is a Generic GPMG (see page 80 of World of Darkness: Armory) and can fire Etheric Rounds, although these rounds have a +1 Merit cost to the standard.

Little Boy Lost / Caught in the Thorns

I had this story idea back when I was running my Hunter game, and I've been prompted to think of it again following recent events in my personal life.
My idea for the Hunter game was to create a sympathetic antagonist that maybe they didn't want to stop, but probably should.
I settled on a Changeling freshly escaped from captivity and returned home from her time in the hedge, changed and confused.
The Changeling was taken when 10 years old, and has matured some 8 years whilst in Arcadia. Unfortunately time in our world has not moved as swiftly, and she has been gone only a year.
Of course, she hasn't been missing. A Fetch took her place and has been living her life for the past year.
When the Changeling turns up at her family home, she finds an 11 year old girl made of twigs and leaves who looks like she did and answers to her name.
Her family turn her away and call the Police.
She escapes, and with nowhere else to go, follows her family.
The Fetch fears discovery greatly, and begins manifesting powers to evade detection and to expose the Changeling, but not before a family member is convinced of the truth.
Acting together, this 'converted' family member and the Changeling kidnap the Fetch, their intent to find out what it is and what is happening.
At this point, the Hunters enter. They are alerted by the kidnapping, and the reports of the strange girl and her insane stories.
As they track and find the Changeling, she uses her obviously supernatural Contracts and abilities to escape.
She returns to where she has the Fetch imprisoned, and as the Hunters confront her again, the Fetch is killed and explodes in a shower of leaves, string and rags.
The Changeling collapses as if wounded, and the perceptive amongst the Hunters will notice a ragged shadow escape from the Fetch's corpse and flee to the dark corners of the room.
This story arc should take about two sessions to play out, and hopefully should surprise the Shit out of the players.

Antagonist design

I chose Hunter: The Vigil as a good game to run for my local club for two main reasons.

1. The core concept is fairly simple to grasp, and doesn't deviate much from, say, 'traditional' D&D. You are hunting monsters. You do so either for money, entertainment, to settle a debt / grudge or to protect the people and places you hold dear.
2. Hunter is a good gateway drug to introduce the players to the other World of Darkness games.

I try to keep these two aims in mind - keep the concept simple, introduce the players to other supernatural beings - when planning sessions.
Ok, you might point out that last night was only the third session proper for this game, however i've kept it up so far.
The first story arc I ran, which as discussed earlier was only supposed to last a session, was about hunting a neonate vampire. It had a quick investigate / locate / fight structure, and served to introduce the players to the system, both roleplay and combat.

For the next story arc, I wanted to introduce another denizen on the WoD, and ran through a few options in my head.
A Promethean? Good idea, but possibly a bit too hard for them at this stage.
A Changeling? Again, good idea, but too complex at this stage.
Another Vampire? That would set a precedent and establish Vampires as the main antagonists of the game. I'd like to avoid that at the moment.
A Werewolf? Even a single Werewolf would tear them all to shreds right now. Maybe a challenge for later on.
A Slasher? I thought about being lazy and using one of the pre-gens from the Slasher book. I quite like the idea of Slashers as a distinct adversary within the setting. Maybe next time.

Instead I settled on using a ghost. Ghosts are supposed to be a core element of the new WoD, with specific Werewolf tribes, Mage paths, Promethean lineages being dedicated to them. And, of course, there's Geist.
So, ghosts are supposed to be fairly common, yet I feel they're often overlooked in favour of the game line specific baddy or other more exotic concepts.

I started by looking at the pre-gen ghosts at the back of the WoD core book. The 'deceiver' ghost looked most like what I wanted.

I then started thinking about motivation and anchors and the like.
I knew that the group would be challenged by a ghost, as they had no way of directly harming it, and the only way they would be able to resolve the challenge would be to either destroy its anchors or complete its unfinished work.

I knew that I wanted a hateful, murdering ghost and, because I wanted to keep things simple, decided that the ghost was a hateful murderer in life as well.
I'd been thinking about what fun I could have with the Phantasm numina, which is essentially an illusion only one person can see, and thought about having a cop shoot an innocent bystander because an illusion showed him brandishing a weapon at the cop.
Seemed like a classic way to get people killed or cause complications for somebody using a simple illusion, so I used it as the starting point for the concept.

Looking at anchors, I had a mobility problem.
I wanted the ghost to move around, yet most anchors are stationery, or if they can move, the ghost is unable to control that movement. Also, if I made a living person an anchor, they would have to kill them to banish the ghost. Whilst this would make for an interesting moral quandry, I don't think they're ready for it yet.
In the end, I settled on two anchors - an old taxi cab and an old shed. This gave me two distinct places / objects to be investigated and destroyed, and allowed some mobility.
Maybe a ghost shouldn't be able to drive a cab, but I fudged that.

So, the concept ended up as: Serial killing taxi driver returns from the dead to a/ continue his great work, and b/ extract his revenge on the cop that killed him. The dead cabbie haunts his old taxi cab, which he uses to collect fresh victims, and a shed on the outskirts of town, where he used to cut up his victims.

With this in mind, I had another look at the Deceiver template, and decided that it wasn't quite what I needed.
I statted my own ghost, of similar ability, and gave it telekinesis and animal control instead of ghost sign and terrify.

The finished product, plus my own notes for play, are below.
Unfortunately the group spent too much time dicking around investigating the last story arc to actually meet this guy, but hopefully next week...

Bill Redwood


Ghost



Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 3, Resistance 4

Willpower: 8

Morality: 4

Virtue: Temperance

Vice: Lust

Initiative: 7

Defence: 4

Speed: 17

Size: 5

Corpus: 9   

Numina:

Animal Control – Cost 1 essence. Power + Finesse – animals Resolve. Control 3 animals at once

Phantasm – Cost 1 Essence. Power + Finesse. Negative modifiers applied for complexity. Target makes Wits + Occult roll to disbelieve the illusion.

Telekinesis – Cost 1 Essence. Power + Finesse. Successes = ghosts relative strength. -3 modifier to attack directly, ignores Defence, cover and armour.



Anchors: Old taxi cab, Killing hut in South West Philadelphia



History: Bill Redwood had been a cabbie in Philadelphia for ten years when he got stiffed for a fare. He chased the fare down and when he caught up with him, a fight ensued. Bill didn’t mean to kill him, but when he did, he was left with blood on his hands and a body to dispose of.

He took the corpse to an old warehouse near the airport that his Uncle used to work out of, cut the body up and fed it to the local stray dogs.

Whether it was the act of killing, or the cutting and dismemberment afterwards, but something broke in Bill from that point.

The next fare dodger was hunted down and disposed of in the same way. And then another. Then Bill started driving the long way round to bump up the fare. Then he started looking for other reasons – Queue jumpers. Rude people. Ugly people. Pretty people. People who wouldn’t be missed.

This carried on for months, all the while Bill upped his game and targeted more and more challenging prey.

People soon noticed, and Philadelphia became gripped with a fear of the Cabbie Killer.

The city’s cab drivers pulled together and attempted to police their ranks. Local government ran campaigns to raise safety awareness. The Philly PD worked overtime to track the killer down.

In the end, it was luck that stopped Bill Redwood. Two bored patrol cops stopped his cab near the edge of the National Wildlife Refuge, and discovered the separated remains of Redwood’s latest victim in the trunk.

Redwood was shot, executed, in cold blood by Officer Phil Davies after he surrendered. Davies’ partner, Nick Richmond, corroborated Davies’ story that Redwood had moved to attack them with a hatchet.

The truth is, Redwood was relieved to have finally been caught, and was willing to hand himself in.

Hunter: The Vigil - Forming / Storming / Conforming / Performing

Ran session two of Hunter: The Vigil for the Bolton gaming group last night, and managed to attract four players: Gemma, Chris J, James and Gareth.

I'd spent the two weeks since the first session sketching out in my head what I wanted to happen. The challenge was to turn what should have been a quick introductory encounter at the end of the first session into a viable session in and of itself.
It's a new game to the group, and the first time i've run 'Vigil, so i'd originally planned a very basic first session - Local druggie drop-out becomes a vampire, and uses his new powers to kill / beat up the local gang members and drug dealers that he'd formally worked for / bought from.
I 'designed' the antagonist to be a brutal thug, as subtle as a brick, and fairly unintelligent, then threw in the horrific murder of his nice, normal middle class suburban parents to give the players some additional motivation to stop him, just in case a bunch of dead pimps, pushers and players wasn't really floating their boat.

The first session started a little later than envisaged due to character creation and my general disorganisation, but I was happy with the quality of the roleplay coming out.
Then the roleplay got a little too out of hand - everybody wanted to explore their character and showcase their 'soft' skills. The drug addict got high, the criminal stole medicine from the hospital.
Not that I mind any of that, in moderation, but it did slow down the session considerably.
The last 'encounter' (still thinking in linear terms, after all this time) should have been a quick fight with the vampire. They'd established his identity, found a pattern to his attacks and determined who would be next. They'd even narrowed it down to a place and time.
They should have just gone there, waited for him to show up and jumped him. A quick combat would have followed and the session ended.
However, we didn't have time, so it carried over to the next session.

So, to return to my challenge, I had to stretch something that should have taken 15 minutes into about two hours.

I started off by thinking about what I wanted to acheive.
It would still be the first combat of the game, so it had to be a 'good example' of combat. Basic, and introduce the players to the possibilities.
It also had to present additional challenges beyond 'kill this one guy'.
They knew that the vampire's next target was a dealer called 'Tuco' (yes, when needing low life villain names on the fly, I ripped off 'Breaking Bad), so I fleshed him out a bit (again, in my head, as I've realised that 60% of prep' doesn't see the light of day) and built up the scenario in which they would meet him.
I also added some faceless gang members and a ghoul retainer to the vampire, and populated the neighbourhood with tricks, johns and junkies.

I'm pleased with the way to players rose to the challenge. They got close to Tuco, without making any attempt to warn him or ally themselves with him. Basically, they put themselves in direct danger from a dangerous criminal so that they could react effectively to the vampire when he arrived.
I can see, at this early stage, that they're quite morally ambivalent. The majority have no qualms about commiting crimes themselves, either to aid the hunt or to aid their pockets, yet have no time or patience for criminals. In fact, the drug dealers and gang members caught in the cross fire were not mourned and barely noticed. Clearly these people have never seen Austin Powers.

I think I wasn't consistent or harsh enough with Morality tests or Degeneration.
James should have had to make a Morality check for shooting the crippled, defenceless ghoul, and Gareth should have had to have made one for accidentally shooting the gang member being fed on by the vampire.
I can see Gareth's TF:V character adopting an alternative code of conduct before too long, anyway. He doesn't seem to be adverse to this suggestion.

The session ended with a wounded ghoul and a torpid vampire being gaffa taped up and bunged in their boot for further investigation / interrogation.

Next session should be next week. I'm having a real think about what to do. I've got a number of ideas, mostly ones I didn't get to use from my old CSI: World of Darkness game, however these are maybe a little too hard for the Hunter Cell at the moment.
I'd like to do something with ghosts, which adds an additional challenge in that none of them can perceive or effect ghosts or spirits at the moment.
I may do something with a demon cult, or I might use some ideas from the World of Darkness: Slashers book (a fantastic book that genuinely gets you excited about eating peoples livers).
Or I might do a mash up.