[3:16] Semi-Captain, Lt.-Captain, almost-Captain on deck, sir!
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
I'm continuing the details of our game here; you can read about the first two sessions at [3:16] Way Too Easy Or Just Got the Rules Wrong? in the context of the discussion there. I decided to begin a new thread to focus on some specific issues.
At last, we had everyone present: me as GM, Tim K with Lt. Gunther, Tim A with Trooper Kowalski, and Chris with Corp. Deet. Previously we'd seen missions at Durer (pleasure planet, advanced humanoids with boost), Matisse (temperate planet, corrupt troopers with suicide), and Monet (cloud/gas planet, plants with ignore armor). This time we did two more missions, to Titian (forested planet, dinosaurs with impair) and Warhol (radioactive planet, apes with exploding bodies). To clarify what follows: I rolled unbelievably shitty all night. It seemed like I constantly rolled 1's and 10's; in the former case, that often meant that the soldiers usually knocked out all the Threat Tokens before I even got a chance. On a related point, regarding Dominance rolls, I haven't managed a true alien ambush in the entire game to date.
Titian was a bit of a walk-through, but it provided some good ongoing story material. I was thinking about how to get the mission under way when it occurred to me that Lt. Frinks wouldn't mind simply assassinating those he hated (Gunther and Deet) through a kind of impromptu mission. The men were hit with yet another pointless military exercise of setting up all their equipment for a mission, including an NFA roll to do it right, and then they were tranked in their sleep and shot off in a shuttle that was due to be junked toward a planet. As Deet had failed his NFA roll, Chris had to choose what single weapon he'd have, which was especially painful for the weapon-festooned Deet. Gunther was able to use his manual to determine some details about the planet, and some other rolls brought the shuttle in for a decent landing.
So if I haven't made it clear, there was no actual mission; the point of the adventure was about how they could get off the planet and back to the ship. It also raised the obvious question of how they might be so easily disposed of - i.e., enemies in high places.
At first glance, a forested planet featuring dinosaurs with Impair would seem like a fine reprise of Jurassic Park with lots more bullets and no stupid little kids underfoot. Unfortunately my roll for Alien Ability yielded only 5, and I barely got in two or three successful rolls the whole mission, with the characters taking no damage at all. I'm getting better at strategizing Encounters, i.e. how many, and how many Tokens in each, but the low value didn't help. Granted, Flashbacks made the most difference. Gunther waxed the raptors with a new Strength, and the pterodactyls did ruin the communications equipment (an instance of players hosing themselves with a winning narration).
Chris seemed to be reading my mind, always speculating about what bad things might happen and turning out to be absolutely in tune with what I was about to do. In this case, it was that I'd already decided to interpret the Impair as camouflage before he gloomily predicted it. As it happened, this made it twice as fun, and I kind of hope that he chooses "sees it coming, unfortunately," or something like that for Deet's next strength.
Kowalski is the unluckiest Trooper ever. Get this. The final encounter offered the surprising view of gentle civilized dinosaur people with their own functioning shuttle, and then a tyrannosaur rears up behind the hill. The roll looks bad for them (for once). Tim A fills Kowalski's available Strength slot with "Linguist," then goes and talks dinosaur to them, telling them to flee before they all get killed. He rolls seven kills, and with a suggestion from me, the tyrannosaurus leans down to hear him during the dialogue (like a big, big terrier), Kowalski shoots it through the earhole, and it falls to squash six of the dinosaur people, and the rest run screaming. All that, and after the mission, he still flubs the Development roll and doesn't level up! (Incidentally, Kowalski has no interest in ranking up whatsoever, so this really pissed Tim off.)
I also brought in an important new NPC, Major Frinks (who I think I'm going to have to upgrade now that I reviewed the ranks). He's a tough, grizzled, scary-looking, ideal of a field officer who's finally made the brass. He's also very disappointed in his objectionable offspring, good ol' Lt. Frinks, and wants a "real son" to be his legacy. He gave Gunther a kind of bogus promotion to captain, largely by diddling with the ship's computer, and allowed as how any threat to his (Frinks') good name should be dealt with.
Well, as "almost captain" or "lieutenant-captain," as Deet kept calling him, Gunther ushered in a new role for a player-character, to set the mission if not the target. For fun, I had Tim roll the die but I used the charts to set up the planet. As mentioned above, the target planet was called Warhol (prompting an instant flurry of reactions and suggestions from the players), a radioactive planet, harboring apes with exploding bodies. Tim's job was to create the mission, too, which he decided was to collect a sample from deep in the mines, and Gunther also was in charge of the briefing. Imagine his surprise as he was literally shoved into the mission himself by Major Frinks who was passing by; the major wants his new protege to distinguish himself in the field.
This time I rubbed my hands together in anticipation as the Alien Ability was 8, and yes indeed, the mission was much bloodier and more difficult. I didn't quite handle the rules for exploding bodies right at first, and no one died, but they did indeed suffer. This mission featured Flashbacks and frantic medi-pack use all over the place (Deet has taken to looting the bodies of fallen soldiers for them). The drop pod saved their ass big-time, giving them a free ambush, although the circumstances of the terrain didn't let them take their spiffy new APC, or to disclose, actually, the players simply forgot to use it. At the end, Kowalski escaped death only through the most lucky combination of rolls and Flashbacks that permitted them to end the encounter one Threat Token ahead of annihilation.
In this case, Chris joked that touching the radioactive core would provide super-powers, and yet again, I'd already decided to do exactly that (hit them with radioactive ape superheroes for the last encounter) about five or ten minutes previously.
I'm not really sure how to describe it, but this particular sequence, in fact this whole mission, yielded a lot of compelling imagery and weight. The leather aprons the apes wore, the watch-tower toppling, the intersections of the mine shafts, and much more, seemed especially logical, even causal as we went along, in my head. Also, I got the idea that all the players felt kind of sorry for the radioactive ape miners, overall.
Hey, you want to see players eagerly create Weaknesses for their characters? Give the ranking officer a TPK. And finally, Kowalski completed the mission all by himself again, and at least this time he leveled up. Gunther didn't get to keep his dubious captaincy, though, having displayed a Weakness. Also, at one point he tried to punch Lt. Frinks and got put into an arm-lock and made to squeal.
Considering the new rank issues, we've entered the phase of play described in the text as "It's not about the missions." Actually, the missions are involved, because creating them is turning into an in-play process. I can see now that my job as GM will finally include prep, which has definitely not been the case so far, including making up a traditional stable of active NPCs. I should probably even start considering how many high-brass characters there are. Off-mission play is not going to be just about briefing the grunts any more. I've tossed in some details, but now it's time actually to think about things like sections and regions of the fleet, past actions and relationships of different high-ranking officers, the extent to which the commander of 3:16 is in contact with the Terran fleet in general (and in fact with Terra command itself), and more.
I need to get that framework pretty solidly built too, because the personal stories among our player-characters are also coming to a head. On the one end, there's jumpy Lt. Gunther is a berserker (S), full of rage (S), can't handle responsibility (W), exactly the worst personality to be the ambitious ranker-upper he is. On the other, there's lazy fuck Trooper Kowalski, a tinkerer (S), a languages expert (S), and passive-aggressive (W); and most importantly, despite extraordinary competence, a determinedly under-achieving sad sack. Stuck in the middle is tactless Corporal Deet, pragmatically callous (S), must be the center of attention (W), and now we learn he can't kill kids (W). He's getting more complex under his thick skin and cynical obedience; I'm beginning to think Deet is the Yossarian of the bunch.
Gunther is clearly headed for a fall if not an outright fragging; Tim is playing him as more and more crazy-mean as he goes, perfectly happy to murder and sacrifice soldiers, and patently unfit for the higher rank he keeps driving for. Chris keeps goading him as hard as he can with Deet's respectful-disrespect, one example from this session being all the ways he found to emphasize the pseudo-rank Gunther briefly enjoyed, as implied in the thread title.
In sum, this is a big turning point for our game. The drama among the higher ranks and the trauma during the missions are both hitting boiling point. I suspect the next session will have a great deal to do with who, if anyone, remains standing.
As a final minor detail, I'm also thinking that we should take some more time with the missions, really get into the color and feel for each planet. I should think about providing more opportunities to interact with the aliens when dialogue might be possible, and to have a few more NFA rolls. So far, we've never been stuck for details or imagery, and I think each planet has been very vivid, but it's been so much fun with just a little bit that I want to extend it more.
Best, Ron
edited to fix the link in the first paragraph - RE
GreatWolf:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 22, 2008, 08:23:44 AM
Considering the new rank issues, we've entered the phase of play described in the text as "It's not about the missions." Actually, the missions are involved, because creating them is turning into an in-play process. I can see now that my job as GM will finally include prep, which has definitely not been the case so far, including making up a traditional stable of active NPCs. I should probably even start considering how many high-brass characters there are. Off-mission play is not going to be just about briefing the grunts any more. I've tossed in some details, but now it's time actually to think about things like sections and regions of the fleet, past actions and relationships of different high-ranking officers, the extent to which the commander of 3:16 is in contact with the Terran fleet in general (and in fact with Terra command itself), and more.
When you begin doing this prep, I'd love to hear about it. Specifically, I'd like to hear what details you prep and what techniques you use. (For example, I doubt that formal relationship mapping techniques make a whole lot of sense in this context.) So, for instance, when you make up the larger fleet context, are you planning on making that essentially out of whole cloth, or are there details from previous sessions that you can harvest? I wonder the same for NPCs. Are you going to take your currently established NPCs and situate them in a larger network of relationships? (For that matter, will it be a "network" or will it be a hierarchy of relationships?)
Based on my recollection, this is an area that the game doesn't spell out very well, plus it fits into my current interest in emergent campaigns. So, I'm curious to see how you will do it.
Tim C Koppang:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 22, 2008, 08:23:44 AM
The drop pod saved their ass big-time, giving them a free ambush, although the circumstances of the terrain didn't let them take their spiffy new APC, or to disclose, actually, the players simply forgot to use it.
Not quite. We didn't take the APC because Lt./Capt. Gunther was too afraid of getting it scratched ("It's new!"). But also because I, Tim, forgot about it until after the fact.
Because Gunther was so protective of the APC, when he tried to use his TPK grenade Deet used a weakness to escape; then retreated back to the dropship and proceeded to vandalize Gunther's precious APC.
Incidentally, Ron, you're right. Gunther is becoming more and more self-destructive. His troopers don't respect him. The other officers don't trust him, and he's not one of the boys. He's so focused on obedience and ranking up that he's probably bound to do something stupid. I picture Deet fragging him, but that could just be paranoia (ooh! new weakness). I would like to invent some redeeming strength for him before he bites it, though.
Chris W:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 22, 2008, 08:23:44 AM
As a final minor detail, I'm also thinking that we should take some more time with the missions, really get into the color and feel for each planet. I should think about providing more opportunities to interact with the aliens when dialogue might be possible, and to have a few more NFA rolls. So far, we've never been stuck for details or imagery, and I think each planet has been very vivid, but it's been so much fun with just a little bit that I want to extend it more.
This is actually a BIG detail for me. Right now, the game has a creepy tinge to it, and I find myself anxious to play before every session, but I can't help but feel it would be all the more horrifying if we got to know the bugs a bit more before we ruthlessly killed them.
(Except for radioactive, soulless apes. Those things just need to die.)
greyorm:
Quote from: GreatWolf on November 24, 2008, 01:00:36 PM
Based on my recollection, this is an area that the game doesn't spell out very well, plus it fits into my current interest in emergent campaigns. So, I'm curious to see how you will do it.
I second that request, as I just finished reading 3:16 a few weeks ago and thought the game sounded awesome, but was left scratching my head how to, well, play the game (beyond rolling the dice, especially beyond "land on planet and kill everything").
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