Spirit of the Century adventure: Time Heals All Wounds concept

I originally posted this to my Google Plus account, but I thought I'd copy it over here and flesh it out a bit.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm heading to Indianapolis with the entire family (including three little kids) to attend Gen Con this year. Three little kids makes it kind of hard to set aside a four hour time block for role playing during one of the scheduled events, and that's just fine. We have a blast every year that we attend. We are also not staying in the main conference hotels because our kids really do deserve a rest after a day exploring the convention. A more remote hotel fits that bill nicely.

Still, there may be an opportunity for some after hours gaming back at our hotel and I would like to be prepared. I was originally planning on having a Call of Cthulhu or Mouse Guard adventure worked up, but decided it was too much work for the time that I have. Besides, I wanted something that would probably appeal to the widest group of potential players that I might have.

So, I've decided to prepare a Spirit of the Century game just on the off chance that we get an opportunity to play. While the book is a little dense for me to do a full pickup game, I think Spirit of the Century's FATE system could really sing with both experienced role playing game players and with players new to the idea of role playing. So another part of my prep will be the creation pre-generated characters for everyone, but I'll hold off on that until the adventure is done in order to tailor the heroes for the challenges that they may face.


I'm calling the adventure Time Heals All Wounds and it includes a bit of time travel, the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, the friendship between Mark Twain and Tesla, and a final showdown at Machu Pichu.



For inspiration, here's the public domain photo of Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla's lab from Wikipedia that got me thinking about all this.

I had read about Tesla and Edison's rivalry a few years ago and thought it would be fun to do something with that idea in a game. While watching a documentary on Twain, I saw that he and Tesla were close friends in the late 1800s. I'd also read that Edison had had meetings with Twain in Twain's later years. It was interesting to me that these figures had all crossed paths.

For my Gen Con session, I want to do something that includes all of these historical figures, but the time lines don't work with Spirit of the Century. I also wanted to put a pulpy spin on who they were and how they'd go about solving their problems. Twain's death in 1910 added a huge stumbling block to this idea as Spirit of the Century is set in the early 1920's. Besides, Tesla and Twain spent time together mostly in the later 1800s. Then I thought of Twain's book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court  and how it involved time travel. 

Then everything fell into place. 

Time Heals All Wounds is going to be about Tesla's growing bitterness and loneliness following Twain's death in 1910 and his ongoing quest for recognition in the shadow of Edison. After being snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee in 1915, Tesla starts a research project into time travel combining some of Einstein's theories with some of his own more radical ideas. 

As our story opens, Tesla has used his device a few days before, but something has gone horribly wrong. Instead of going back in time, he's brought Tesla and Twain to the present and the resulting paradoxes may just rip the world apart!

Can our hero's stop Present Tesla's plan before he destroys the world? Can Mark Twain keep Past Tesla in check and get them both back to their own time? Will Edison work with Marconi to do them all in? All that and an exciting conclusion on the cliff city of Machu Picchu awaits in Time Heals All Wounds!

So that's where I'm at. I'll be posting some notes here as I go along.

A couple of people gave me ideas for source material and flavor in the original Google Plus thread. Brad Murray, one of the creator's of the award winning Diaspora RPG, suggested that I pick up the Atomic Robo comics as they deal with ideas surrounding Tesla's rivalry with Edison. Dave Chalker of critical-hits.com suggested picking up the Five Fists of Science.

The first thing I need are ten punchy, pulpy FATE aspects each for mad scientist Nikola Tesla, Nikola Tesla from the past, Mark Twain from the past, Thomas Edison, and Guglielmo Marconi.

This should be fun.

** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Parent Con: After Hours Gaming for Gen Con Attendees with Kids

So. We're going to Gen Con again this year... and we're bringing kids.

To be fair, every year that we have attended Gen Con in the last three years, we've have kids in tow. First it was with our four year old son, Ranger, walking around and baby Scout in a backpack. The next year was with a five year old Ranger dressed as Mario and Scout dressed as a little Luigi (perhaps you saw us). And this year, we've got another baby along for the long strange trip.

The first year, we stayed at a friend's house and that worked pretty well. The next, we got a hotel on the Northwest side away from the louder and more expensive conference hotels in an effort to guaranty that our little adventurers had plenty of time to rest and restore hit points at night. Our hotel had lots of nice amenities including suites, a nice pool, a provided modest breakfast and dinner and a pretty big lobby with a couple of big tables.

We had a great time and were able to regroup at night. However, we did miss out on some of the after hours gaming that would have been available if we had stayed in one of the conference locations. Still, the sleep and rested kids was worth it. They ended up enjoying the convention and so did we.

This year we're staying in the same place, but are hoping to still get in some after hours fun. First, we're going to invite some friends to visit our hotel. If they're coming to Gen Con, we're encouraging them to stay at the same place (it's just a short drive back down town after all and their kids will get a good night sleep as well). Then we're hoping to encourage other attendees with kids to possibly stay out there as well.

We've jokingly dubbed it... Parent Con! It's the informal after con gathering for gamers with kids.

I'm reading up on Call of Cthulhu and Mouse Guard RPG and I'm planning on running a couple of sessions if we get any takers after our brood is put to bed at night. We'll also bring along a couple of board games and party games.

If you're attending the convention in August and are looking for a place to stay that will offer both rest for your kids, a chance to meet other gamers brave enough to bring kids to the con as well, and the potential to game after you pack it in from the con for the night, drop me a line at morlockhq at gmail dot com.

Are you attending Gen Con with kids? Do you think that's a totally insane idea in the first place? Let me know in the comments.



** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Make Games Better: Character Sheet Walk Through

One of the toughest parts of teaching role playing games to other people is the character creation process. It's an alien thing to present a newcomer to the RPG hobby with a sheet of paper that essentially looks like an IRS form and ask them to fill it out as part of the process of "creating their character."

So, as I was reading through the rules of the sixth edition of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game, I was happy to find the two page spread on page 36 and 37 under the Creating Your Investigator section header. All the basic steps for filling out a basic Call of Cthulhu character sheet are arranged around a scaled down graphic of an actual character sheet. These two pages clearly lay out the mechanical steps needed to create an investigator in the Call of Cthulhu game. Sure, there are no frills and some of the details aren't explained in their entirety until later sections of the book, but there is at least enough information presented to get a new player up and running quickly.

More games should do this. I could sit anyone down with these two pages and a blank character sheet and they'll have a lot easier time of it than had I started them without this handy guide. It is a shame that more games don't take this approach to character creation in their rules.

Chaosium makes an excellent quick start guide to Call of Cthulhu available through their website. With little more than this free 20 page PDF, a group of potential investigators can dip their toes in Cthulhu Mythos role playing. I think Chaosium can only help itself by incorporating page 36 and 37 from the sixth edition of the core rules into this guide. Furthermore, I would love to see other game publishers and designers take a look at these pages and add something similar to their games. As table top RPGs have to compete for attention with more and more forms of entertainment, anything that lowers the barrier of entry into playing the games is a good idea. When I read over this two page spread, it immediately struck me that they were exactly the types of design ideas that would help in that pursuit.

If you have a copy of the book, take a look and see what I mean. I've seen examples of filled in character sheets in some other games. The Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game has a character sheet that is filled in with the examples that were used as illustrations of the character creation process earlier in the text. Spirit of the Century takes a more section by section approach, but is similar, in the end, to Mouse GuardI think this approach also works pretty well, but I the Cthulhu rules feel like a more complete expression of this concept to me.

What games have the the best character creation rule/process that you've found?

** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog that's currently flirting with nameless entities and sanity sapping horrors while reaquainting itself with Call of Cthulhu. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Cubes for Cthulhu: Rory's Story Cubes in role playing games

 My wife received a review copy of Rory's Story Cubes a while back and, after playing with them for a couple of months with my son, I posted a review on her site. Baby Toolkit. Rory's Story Cubes are a set of nine white six sided dice with a unique pictogram imprinted on each face. The idea is to roll the dice and then construct a story incorporating all of the pictograms on the face up sides. Long review short, we really liked them and I have a lot of fun making up stories with my son using them.

But having used them all this time, the time that I am also reading up on role playing game rules as I prepare to start playing again, got me thinking. These cubes, or something like them, could be an interesting tool for a game master or Keeper to generate scenario ideas off the cuff.

Stumped as to what adventure to throw at you investigators? Roll the dice and piece something together.

The base set from Gamewright contains pictograms that have a few modern allusions such as cell phone, a jet liner, and credit card that might make it easier to "generate" a story in a modern setting. But a little creative leeway can interpret these in an era appropriate manner should you want to roll up a 1920s era Cthulhu scenario. Still other of the base game's pictograms are eerily suited for Cthulhu play including a boy who's shadow is a creepy monster, a scarab, a pyramid, a symbol of chaos, a falling star (they are right aren't they), a magic wand, a book (or is it a tome), a castle keep, and a fish (dagon?). I think the basic set would make a nice addition to a Keeper's tool chest.

What would be even cooler is if Paizo or Chaosium came out with their own themed story cubes with setting appropriate pictograms for the Pathfinder or Call of Cthulhu role playing games.

So, what scenarios could you come up with for the rolls depicted in the pictures above?

** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog. Others exits. We received a review copy of Rory's Story Cubes from Gamewright. Beyond the review copy of Rory's Story Cubes from Gamewright, I have no ongoing financial relationship with any of the publishers of the games listed. I am, however, attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Funny what you find when you look: RPGs at Wal-mart

This Christmas, I received a very generous Wal-mart gift card. I don't go to Wal-mart very often, but it is close to my house and, as a general purpose store, it carries a lot of things that I could probably use. Still, while I was hanging out at home, I couldn't really think of anything that I wanted or needed off the top of my head. So I decided to check out the Wal-mart.com website knowing that they have more stuff there than can be found at any one location.

I'd been hoping to pick up a few role playing game books and board games with any Christmas money I might receive. I wanted to buy the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Player's Guide, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: GameMastery Guide and the 6th edition of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game. On a whim, I typed a couple of titles into the Wal-mart website search and, lo and behold, I found some of them!

It took a while to search for everything. Wal-mart.com's search engine stinks if you are trying to find items in a general category (say RPGs), but searching for specific titles works and you can have some success looking for general role playing game and board game titles with a little probing and guess work.

I was able to find the following role playing books:

• Pathfinder: Core Rule Book: $42.49
• Pathfinder: Advanced Players Guide: $26.00
• Call of Cthulhu: $25.50
• Various Dungeons & Dragons manuals, including (among quite a few others):
• Dungeon Master's Guide: $22.15
• Player's Handbook: $22.15
• Monster Manual: $22.15
• and the D&D Essentials Rules Compendium: $13.00

I also found hobby board games like:

• Carcassonne: $29.97
• and a couple of expansions
• Ticket to Ride: $43.97
• Starcraft Board Game: $89.97
• Castle Ravenloft Boardgame: $64.99
• Puerto Rico: $39.97
• Betrayal at House on the Hill: $49.99
• Word on the Street: $24.97

And if you choose the Ship to Store option, you get free shipping with the minor hoop of having to pick it up from the store to jump through.

Generally, I'd like to support my friendly local gaming store, but unfortunately the closest game store to my house is over an hour away. We do buy games from this store when we get the chance to visit and we do buy games directly from creators and publishers while attending Gencon. If my new project/cause of playing games in public bears fruit, maybe someone will open a full featured gaming store in my town or the larger town that's close by. Until then, I like finding deals in interesting and unexpected places and I'd say that finding some of these core role playing game books and hobby board games on walmart.com certainly qualifies.

** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog. Others exits. This is mine. Only the text product links in the bulleted list point to Walmart.com. Buying from the image links or the links above actually point to my wife's Amazon affiliate account. Surely you'd figure this out, I'm just being up fron in this disclaimer. I have no ongoing financial relationship with any of the publishers of the games listed or Walmart. I am, however, attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Starting the stories

The first Dungeons & Dragons
book that I ever looked at.

I first encountered pen and paper role playing games when I was in third and fourth grade. This was back in the early 80s and my mom had me in a carpool in order to get me home from my school. Some of the kids that I rode along with were much older and involved in Boy Scouts. We generally dropped by a number of schools and homes on the way to my final destination, picking up and dropping off child cargo as we went. It could take a long time from being picked up to actually arriving at the final destination, be it school or home. To pass the time, these boys played a game in the van with meticulously drawn maps on graph paper and lots of interesting colored dice and books with interesting and terrifying monsters on the covers.

The second Dungeons & Dragons book that I ever read.
I blame this image of the two thieves stealing the
jeweled eye for my penchant for
playing thieves and rogues

The game they were playing was something called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

I was fascinated, but not allowed to play. The parents that shuttled us around thought I was too young. However, they didn't see the harm in letting me listen in on the boys' adventures and look through the books when they didn't need to look something up.

I was hooked.

A couple of years later, my family moved to another state. My dad was in the military and we didn't stay in one place for very long. We moved into on base housing and two boys happened to live in the town house next door. As a way of welcoming us, the parents suggested that the boys show us around and we became fast friends. A couple of days later, their dad brought home a pop up camper that needed to be aired out before being used for the summer and set it up in the parking spaces out front and I was invited to "camp" out there for the night.

With no TV and a hot Southern night in the mix, we all started to wonder if this camp out was such a good idea after all. Inevitably we started complaining about being bored. While searching through the drawers for something to do, we ran across some graph paper and I remembered the games that were played in my carpool. So I described the game as best as I could remember it to my new friends and they wanted to play that game. When I explained that I didn't have the books, they encouraged me to just make it up from what I could remember.

So, we played the game. Well, maybe not the game, but a game. They created characters by asking me various questions about what they needed. I spent a few minutes creating a dungeon on the graph paper and we found some six sided dice in another drawer that we used to roll for hits and other stuff.

They loved it. 

I wouldn't find out how much until later that year when my parents surprised me on my birthday with a copy of the original red box set of Dungeons and Dragons (Wizards of the Coast have just released a new D&D Starter Set using the same art as the box that I received). Apparently the boys couldn't stop talking about this game that we played involving monsters and dungeons and their parents told my parents. When my mom and dad saw the red box on some random outing to the store, they remembered the word "dungeons" and decided that this just had to be what my friends' parents had been talking about.

We played that game for the next year. When we reached the maximum character levels, we'd retire the them and start from scratch.

A couple of years later, I moved somewhere else in town and found another group of kids my age that were already playing D&D. They were using the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules and weren't interested in playing my well worn vanilla edition. I didn't mind, I was happy to be a player instead of the only Dungeon Master. When my new DM was looking to play, our group started branching out into other role playing games  that started springing up around that time.

I started by stumbling across Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness in that back of a doll and collectible stuffed animal store that wasn't far from our neighborhood (that's another story). I was a fan of the graphic novels, so it seemed a good fit. After that, I picked up the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game as it used the same rule set as TMNT. Fast on its heels was Paranoia: A Role Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future, and Call of Cthulhu: Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft. We dipped our toes into nearly every system and every world. We played games constantly and read fantasy, pulp horror, and science fiction books incessantly as potential sources of inspiration. I remember reading Moby Dick in seventh grade for extra credit (a challenge that our teacher thought no one would take up) and thinking "this would make an awesome game!" 

My friends and I were some of the most voracious readers that I knew. Sometimes it would get us into trouble. The parochial school that we attended didn't look too kindly on the monsters and demons that graced the covers of our books and the school finally gave up calling to inform our parents of what we were reading after consistently being told that "yes, they were aware of what we were reading" and "no, it didn't bother them."

I moved again to attend high school and played off and on through those years. Never as much or in as varied a set of games as the previous five years. When I went away to college, I stopped playing altogether and focused more on school.

Within the last two years, I've started to come back to gaming. I've been playing hobby boardgames since just after college and some of the bleed over between that and role playing games started to pique my interest. I remembered how much I loved playing, and really missed it.

While at Gencon 2009 with my wife, who was covering the board gaming side, I picked up the HackMaster Basic RPG on a whim. Those earlier experiences with other games had me gravitating away from Dungeons and Dragons proper. I liked it. Later, I won a copy of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook by entering a story into an Atomic Array podcast contest. I liked it so much, I've since bought the The Pathfinder Bestiary, which is truly awesome. At this year's Gencon, I picked up a copy of the Spirit of the Century RPG and, as a result, I've become a complete FATE system fan . I recently won another contest put on by Atomic Array, and just received Rogue Games'  Shadow, Sword & Spell: Basic, which I am enjoying very much (its 12 degrees engine has a number of features similar to what I love about FATE).

All this is to say. I'm back. I've missed this stuff and I'd like to give a little something back to the community that I've enjoyed so much in the past and that's welcomed this wayward player back into the fold.

** Storied Adventures is written by a lapsed role playing geek. It is one man's chronicle of embracing one more of his many geeky facets. I have no ongoing financial relationship with any of the games listed, though I was lucky enough to win a copy of the the Pathfinder Role Playing Game and Shadow, Sword & Spell (thanks, Ed & Rone) and Richard Iorio of Rogue Games also sent me a copy of a Shadow, Sword & Spell adventure (thanks, Richard). I am, however, attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)