Floating in the Grid: Session Zero

No one knows why the world, time and space, broke apart and scattered. All that is known is that one day the world fell apart. Not exploded, not shattered (there was nothing explosive!), but fell apart, like a stick of butter melting onto a table. Somehow the city of Angel Grove survived this horror, and it floated on the rock beneath it. These are the stories of the city that floated, and of its defenders: the Power Rangers.

Yeah, that's pretty grim. That's how I roll, so tough. 

So I'll be starting a series based off of playthroughs in Heroes of the Grid. I'm going to start with the "base" Hyperforce group. No, I've not seen Hyperforce, and I've no real pressing need to do so.  I'm sure the show is just fine, but after trying to imagine the beginning of whatever the heck I'm writing I can't visualize it with the MMPR folks. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm going to do a bit of research to make sure I'm not writing the characters egregiously wrong, but most of my cues to their personalities will be based off of what their decks do.  So, um, if this goes wrong blame Jonathan Ying for not covering his bases?

Yeah, we'll go with that. I'll just blame him.

Nothing could go wrong doing that.

Anyway, most of the posts will revolve around gameplay. Actual characterization will be light and, unless I specifically mention otherwise, nothing from canon will be here. The setting is incredibly weird and different and I want to have the room to develop the characters as I see fit. If that weirds you out I'm not going to apologize, cause I need room to go where I think the narrative should go. I may write in-between posts to set up future rangers and threads, but I'm not going to promise anything until I'm in the thick of it.

There's going to be some opportunities for commenters  to shape how the games progress! Everyone can vote to see their favorite character show up in the next session. And yes, since I'll be posting to Facebook and Reddit, in multiple groups, you can tip the vote. I won't be doing more than just the barest of name checks to make sure y'all aren't cheating. Monsters can also be requested. If I do not own the monster then I'm obviously not going to be using him. I currently do not own the first Villain Pack or Cyclopsis. I plan on rectifying this at some point, but that's not going to be today.

At some point I will begin to homebrew my own stuff for the game, like scenarios and custom rules, as the narrative takes shape. I do not have anything in mind, although I am open to suggestions. If you have mechanics you want featured in the game comment here, Facebook, or Reddit and I will let you know if I will be using it. All games will use Assault Mode. This could get rough. Unless I specifically mention it these games will be solo. I will be playing three decks of six rangers in total. Losses will probably be because my brain is overloaded, although I will blame the dice every time. 

Anyway, that's it! We'll be releasing the first session next week! Vote! Stay tuned!

May the Power Protect You: Kimberly Ann Hart (MMPR Pink)

I've often found that people who are new to the game need permission to be awesome. There's a mental roadblock many folks have to doing the crazy, but amazing, thing. Since those sorts of actions are required to survive in this game I find that handing Kimberly to a new player is a good idea, as there is an immediate pay off that is flashy, explosive, and quite deadly to the target. Welcome to the single highest damage dealing character in the game! Kimberly is a force of nature. She rains hellfire on all who oppose her. ALL HAIL THE ALL MIGHTY BABA YAGA, KIMBERLY! Kimberly is, by far, the simplest character in the core set. She is incredibly useful for her energy generation and the ignoring of Guard.  She isn't the deepest character but she isn't meant to be. Point. Shoot. KILL.

Kimberly's ability to assign one damage anywhere she likes looks nice, and it feels nice, but it is definitely the hardest part of playing her character. There's this pause, as the player feels a bit overwhelmed. They want to throw it where it feels good, but dice are involved in the follow-up; they don't know if their guess will work out or not. And there are times when it feels like Kimberly's ability whiffs, because it is a set up for something down the line and it may not pan out. There's a surprising amount of skill required for this ability, as you have to size up the other players' hands and figure out where they're going to be playing cards and trying to hit the one card that needs the shove the most. It is also the one part of Kimberly's kit that gets hijacked the most by asshole quarterbackers... leaders. "Put that damage here or there or anywhere!" Don't let it happen! I know it does, because I'm generally the dude doing it, but please don't let idiots like me dictate your character's ability! You are a strong independent Pink Ranger and don't need NO QUARTERBACKERS!

Take Aim is a card that is to be played, immediately, all the time. There is literally no reason not to play the card if Kimberly is going to be attacking. Extra energy with a reroll? Yes PLEASE. The results from cards like Take Aim are often quite spectacular, particularly if you play Take Aim off of MMPR Red's Team Tactics. And, if you're particularly in need of energy, you can finish off the string of energy gains with Flying Kick, which means the hit may actually be pretty strong for two dice and you get the extra energy from it!

Kimberly's other asset is her ability to ignore the Guard ability. Now, I don't think this ability is as all that good with minions, mostly because of the minion cards are not all that worrisome. In fact we usually find ourselves deliberately taking hits from minions so that way we can get a better ramp up. So in minion fights Kimberly isn't as good as she looks. But in monster and boss fights? Boy, you can't go wrong with having Kimberly in your team. There are times when everyone else whiffs and you have nothing else... and Baba Yaga is all you have left. It may just be that one card that you can't kill, and the group needs a pick-me-up after a long run of failures. Out of all the characters in the base set I would bet you that Kimberly is the one who has the biggest chance of landing that last big, all-necessary, shot.

The Pterodactyl Zord is one of the most useful zords in the game. You just can't argue with two free energy, especially when you're trying to get a power weapon's combo going. And, depending on how your group spends energy, you'll find that the gift just keeps on giving, especially as your group banks the energy and passes it forward to the next battle. There's not a whole more to say about this zord. It's stupidly useful, no matter the situation.

Kimberly's simplicity is belied by her incredible capacity for damage. She runs in, generates energy, deals large amounts of damage to a target, and doesn't need all that much support to do it. Unlike Zack or Rocky, who both need substantial help to pull off their tricks, Kimberly can do her own thing and be alright. She's simple, deadly, and awesome. All hail Baba Yaga!

A kind thanks to Jonathan Ying for answering all my questions, comments, and concerns. He was very gracious.

Moréna: Session Four

The Umbaran: The main character, played by Lena and I. He is currently trying to get into the town hall of a destroyed elven village. He wields a zweihander called Moréna and just lost a short sword called Mairon.

Lona Ered: A mysterious dark force, that seems to take the form of a gigantic male spider. 

The Umbaran went into the building before him, into a great hall. Shadow webs clung to the everything, and the crystal began to flare up in a dying gasp. The Umbaran ignored the flaring up of the crystal. There were many web pods, hanging from the ceiling. The Umbaran cut open one of the pods, and out fell a male elf. He woke up and upbraided The Umbaran. He and the others were trying to become Lona Ered! The elf attacked The Umbaran, who cut him down with a sneer. There was a scuttering sound above him, and a familiar giant bulk hung above him. It was Lona Ered. A lone figure appeared before Lona Ered. The Umbaran pulled out the dying crystal and held it up. The elf before him was unfazed. Webs wrapped up The Umbaran, who could not reach Moréna (and who had thrown Mairon previously). 

Lona Ered dragged away The Umbaran into an adjoining room. The elf came in and, calling The Umbaran "Boros", grabbed the crystals from The Umbaran, cut him loose, and held it up against Lona Ered, who cowered into a corner. The Umbaran taunted Lona Ered, until an elf came running up to him and took  Moréna away from him. The world before him completely changed. Instead of someone holding a crystal with light, it was a ghost, shrouded in darkness. Instead of Lona Ered, it was an elf, with a shrinking aura of light. The Umbaran picked up Moréna and everything became as it was before. He dropped the sword and checked his pocket. The crystals were still in his pocket. Hands burning, he grabbed the crystals and shoved them at the shadowy figure, who screamed. Moréna began to float and pointed at The Umbaran, who held up one of the stones toward it. Moréna's blade split from its hilt and broke in half. The shadowy figure fell apart and the elf who radiated light died.

The Umbaran left the building, but the further he got away from Moréna the weaker he got, until he could barely move. Going back to Moréna The Umbaran became stronger. He picked up the hilt, and the dark webs and the corpse of the Umbaran reappeared. He wrapped up the hilt, but the webs didn't go away. The Umbaran walked back outside, stones in his pocket. He put down the hilt and a darkness appeared in the east. Picking up the hilt again, The Umbaran began his long walk.

The Giggling Dark: Session Twenty, Trait Vote the Second

This session in particular means a lot to me. As it turns out, the longest running Burning Wheel game I've ever run was nineteen sessions. The fact that I never got to do even close to a thirty session campaign was something I really wanted to correct, and this being  session twenty means I'm one step closer.

And Ryan had no idea what he wanted to do. Perfect.

I asked Ryan what he wanted to do, and he said he didn't have anything else he wanted to do with this point of the narrative. He only wanted one thing: to bring back Kora's memories. He told me that either meant one session or fifteen. Laughing, I told him to think fifteen. Ryan told me he expected as much. But after that he thought we should be done. Barring something unexpected I agreed with him. We're on the last act. If this goes according to plan it'll be the first Burning Wheel campaign I've run that wasn't cancelled prematurely. 

With that in mind, we took this Trait Vote very seriously. Sir Xellous' traits are as followed:

Character Traits

Single-Minded

Bereaved

Hard-Working

Blunt

Dice Traits

Prodigy

Chosen of Ikuinen Lampo

Call-On

Aura of Determination

This was a pretty short and sweet. I suggested that we turned Single-Minded to Tenacious (which makes it harder for him to lose a Duel of Wits by bringing him back once if he gets knocked out) and Bereaved to Tough as Nails (which lets him ignore Steel tests from pain and exhaustion). This was because Sir Xellous had pretty much proven to be an unstoppable juggernaut and, given how often he passed the Steel tests for these sorts of things anyway, I thought it would make sense to just make him one hard dude to kill. Ryan liked both these recommendations and made one of his own. Aura of Determination had never really been used, and he found that Commanding Aura (+1D to Command and the ability to help others with Steel tests) would probably be a better mechanical fit. I agreed.

Here's the new breakdown:

Character Traits

Hard-working

Blunt

Dice Traits

Prodigy

Chosen of Ikuinen Lampo

Commanding Aura

We then discussed the upcoming arc, as well as Ikuinen Lampo's role within it. Ryan asked for her to have a greater part in the story, preferably a bit of a love triangle, and I told him that Lampo would want to stop being in Genevieve's body. 

I then explained the difference between "Option A" and "Option B". Option A was a star creating their former body, all over again, and controlling it remotely, and is incredibly powerful. The downshot is that the body isn't actually human, and therefore cannot be healed by normal processes, so if something were to hurt the star's body very little could be done to help her. Option A would last about two to three months. It also required special stuff so that Ikuinen Lampo could recharge the form. Option B, on the other hand, was the reanimation of a human corpse, which is what happened with Genevieve. This form lasts longer, but there is no power that can be channeled. On the other hand, since the body is actually human it's easier to heal.

Ryan wanted Option B. Ikuinen wanted Option A. That would take a session to figure out. And that was before he even talked to the King about leaving his service. Yeah, good luck about that!

Moréna: Session Three

The Umbaran: The Wanderer character, controlled by Lena and I. He wield a zweihander name Moréna and a short sword named Mairon. Last time The Umbaran had killed a gigantic male spider named Lona Ered, who had turned into a shriveled male elven corpse.

The Woman: An apparition of questionable alignment and morality, who apparently is putting The Umbaran through a series of tests.

The Umbaran headed north, up the Gelion river, to where it joined with the Ascarr River. There were plains to the north, the Blue Mountains to the east, and a forest to the west. There was a multi-deck ship on the river, with piles of corpses littering the banks around it. The Umbaran smiled, and went onto the ship.

There was no one on the deck, but The Umbaran heard someone below deck. Unsheathing Mairon, The Umbaran went downstiars. He heard someone below, demanding that he not come down. Chuckling again, he walked down. The below deck was also piled high with corpses, and amidst them stood an elf standing over a human. The elf claimed that these humans served Lona Ered. The Umbaran was amused, because he had just killed Lona Ered! But Lona Ered was not just a gigantic spider; it was not possible to kill Lona Ered. The Umbaran laughed and walked up to the elf, telling him that he'd no idea what he was messing with. The elf panicked and killed the human and then tried to kill The Umbaran, who tanked every shot, laughed, and then killed the elf. He set fire to the ship and walked off, chuckling, into the woods.

The Umbaran cut through the thick underbrush of the woods After going down a hill The Umbaran found himself in a shrine, which was very similar to the one where he had killed Lona Ered. Standing on the opposite side of was a statue of The Woman, but with eight spidery legs. Her face had been messed with so it looked like it was eating the young child she was holding. There was a spring here as well, but it was filled with a black ichor that bubbled up from someplace foul, unlike the clean water that The Umbaran had used to kill the giant spider.  There was a malevolent presence in the grove, which The Umbaran taunted. No response. The Umbaran walked up to the statue and pulled out Moréna. He cut the statue in half and it fell to the ground with a crash. No response. The Umbaran puts his hand in the black ichor; the flow doesn't change, nor did it actually cover The Umbaran's hand. Shaking his head, The Umbaran went deeper into the forest.

A few miles later and The Umbaran stumbled into another shrine. This one had a properly beautiful mother statue, with uneaten child, along with a pure spring. The statue of mother and child glowed with a soft blue light, which The Umbaran found slightly painful. But he walked around, examining the area. He took out the stone. It shone extremely brightly, and The Umbaran put it away hurriedly. He found a corpse on the edge of the shrine. It was an elven woman, covered in black ichor, and she had a scroll in her hand. It read "The evil of Gelionunci has been released. Please let Elen Amille know time is of the essence." The Umbaran picked up the

A number of branches landed in front of The Umbaran. Eight legged shadows flitted from tree to tree around and above him. The Umbaran mocked the spiders for refusing to fight him. They dropped down around him in a circle; they were dead before they hit the ground, for Moréna was quicker than they. Some of the spiders got to the spring and belched a black ichor into it. The statue stopped glowing. The rest of the spiders fled. The Umbaran pulled out his stone; it barely shone now. He shrugged, and headed in the general direction the spiders went.

Even deeper into the woods stood a village. Slaughtered elves littered the walkways. Men, women, and children's blood darkened the fauna. Webs were everywhere. The Umbaran cut the webs away with growls of frustration. Walking through the silent village The Umbaran found the largest building, in the center of village. All of a sudden he was stopped: some force prevented The Umbaran from moving any closer to the building. He heard a voice telling him that he couldn't enter. The Umbaran told that voice to fuck off. The Umbaran saw The Woman not very far off, watching him. Hearing little voices begging him to help The Umbaran chucked Mairon at her, and she vanished. All of a sudden he could go nearer the building. Looking around and muttering, he entered the building.

Burning Wheel vs Torchbearer

I backed Torchbearer the instant I saw it. I'd just finished my first successful Burning Wheel campaign, Revenge of the Countess of Fire, and was hot for anything else that BWHQ was making. I played in one campaign, which was pretty fast and loose on the rules. A rapid series of events occurred over the next four years: enlistment, bootcamp, AIT, marriage, deployment, two kids, and leaving the Army. During that time I GM'd a number of successful (if shortened) Burning Wheel campaigns, but Torchbearer was packed away, and the brief one shots that I attempted ended in TPKs. Years passed, and with successful Burning Wheel campaigns and unsuccessful Torchbearer one-shots piling up I found myself wondering why on earth I'd ever play the game ever again. But finally it clicked. The differences between the two games are their focus on characters vs. the world.

For the past few years, whenever a campaign idea popped into my head it was a villain, or a collection of villains. I would get motivations and plans to recoup losses or accomplish victories over others. These personalities pop into my head, almost fully formed. The question then becomes how these characters accomplish those aims. The setting becomes the why the villain exists. I have a solar system where I house my games, with shared elements between those planets, but in the case of Burning Wheel I have one particular planet that I like to use, because the character dynamics that come from that setting really jive with the villains that pop into my head. Everything is secondary to the characters, including history, which for me is a pretty fuzzy thing. Character is primary in Burning Wheel.

But new ideas have begun to pop into my head. I'm no longer thinking of characters, per se, but of dilapidated buildings, of murals, of animals that have wandered into areas once thought sacred but so long abandoned that nothing remembers it was once important. I keep thinking of structures built like Zelda dungeons, built for their particular inhabitants. I see a world society that is so oppressive that the only place for sane people is to go to these places, where wonder and magic and intense danger are supreme. The physics of this world are in my head, something that I never thought of as interesting before. And Torchbearer is built to handle these sorts of things! The mechanics are set up to where you have to determine the history of the dungeon as you build it, characters have to manage their inventory, and character choices are limited more to immediate interaction with the world. And what's left of the Burning Wheel mechanics are explicitly made to be cause friction with the mechanics of the world.

I don't think these two games are in conflict with each other, because they focus on very different aspects of the fantasy experience. Burning Wheel focuses on the characters primarily, with the fantasy setting providing context for their struggle, but providing little else than that. Torchbearer, however, wants you to interact with the world in a direct manner, making the world itself the primary antagonist of the players. The setting becomes the direct avatar of the GM, something that he takes and forms directly. Both scratch different itches. And, honestly, I'm starting to move over, even just a tad, to where I'm beginning want to want both. Took me a couple of years, but here we are. It may be a hot minute before you see campaign journals on this site, but rest assured, I'm in the middle of prepping a Torchbearer game as we speak. We'll see where it goes from here!

Sabina's Castle: Session Fifteen, Trait Vote the Second

So Andy and I convened for the fifteenth session... and talked ourselves into a trait vote. After three sessions. Granted, there was an almost three year time skip, but man! I've never done a trait vote after three. Here's what we came up with.

Andy put forward a character trait, Wrath of the Fallen. Given that elves in this setting live in a floating ring called the Ring of Tears they view being on the ground as "being stuck".  Andy suggested that an elf marooned on the surface normally became morose and irritable, if not outright irrational after awhile.

I didn't even bother drafting my own trait to vote on.

The next thing we worked out was an affiliation with the mysterious group "The Ones Who Sailed". This elusive group is comprised of six humans, who made it to The Island of Eternal Youth and became immortal. They are led by Telos, who has lived for the past thousand years in defense of the planet as a whole. Whenever one of these individuals tires of immortality they give a token they had carried with them to the island to the next person who is destined to take their place. They then go up to the Ring of Tears and are never seen again.

So not only is Anneli unique in that she is an elf who was given one of these trinkets, but Marian, the one who gave her the trinket in the first place, is still here. It is not known why she did not leave after giving up her keepsake. At any rate, Anneli is in a unique position. She now wants to become worthy of her role.

Why would she think that she's not strong enough?

Well.... let's just say her recovery tests did not go so well. She failed her Mortal Wound test, which dropped her Perception cap to 6, she now has Shaky Hands (-2 Agility, Agility cap of 7), and is now Slightly Clumsy (-1 Speed, Speed cap of 7). All of her physical stats are B4s, so she has lost a good amount of strength.

Join us next time, as Anneli goes monster hunting! With a two year time skip the forces of Rahbarl, Golau, and the remnants of the Argentum Empire have secured their own footholds inside of this ancient city. They all want differing things, but they all have one thing in common: if they could but get Anneli's little toy sword and make it to the Island of Eternal Youth most of their troubles would be over.