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!)