Star Wars: Episode VII: The Darkening Rift Redux

At risk of repeating myself, here's an edited version of the story for the seven session Star Wars mini-campaign I just finished (using Action Cards). I cleaned up some things and added in the details of the final session.

I'll probably talk next time about the mechanical set up, the meta-notes on the project and what seemed to work well.

OPENING CRAWL
The Galaxy remains divided split between several factions. While THE NEW REPUBLIC attempts to restore faith in a central authority, it continues to battle with fragments of the Old Empire, including the DEEP CORE BASTIONS and Grand Mof Garrik's CRIMSON EMPIRE. The outer systems remain divided in their allegiance and many have taken advantage of the chaos. The increasing breakdown of hyperspace routes has only added to this isolation.

The Jedi remain a force of myth and legend, working behind the scenes and battling against grave suspicions. Standing apart from politics, the few Jedi Masters have sought out students in an attempt to bring stability to the galaxy. But force users represent a valuable commodity and a target for criminals and bounty hunters.

A handful of heroes have attempted to turn back the rising tide, fighting against these criminals including the HUTT SYNDICATE. They work to intercept them before they can strike at their targets, or if need be, rescue them from their clutches....

STORY SYNOPSIS
Starting from a simple mission, Captain Ryu Regal and his ship, the Fortunate Rogue, find themselves embroiled in events on a galactic scale. They have been hired by the Jedi Wren Marr to look into a criminal network kidnapping force sensitives for an unknown purpose. Regal and his crew quietly track a smuggler's ship of a smuggler via a tracer the Scout Droid HK-97 planted. The groups intelligence indicates that the smuggler has victims from Tatooine. The target ship rendezvous with a Hutt Slaver vessel in a empty system. The heroes decide to board in order to rescue the prisoners and hunt for more information. On board, they find only a skeleton crew and a single prisoner, frozen in carbonite. The ship's Twi'lek engineer, Rae-Lynn, releases him just as the Hutt ship begins a jump to hyperspace. A wave of Force energy bursts from awakened prisoner, disrupting the jump with disastrous results.

With the disoriented prisoner in tow, the battle their way out as the Hutt ship begins to disentegrate. Sections of the vessel tear open, exposed to the void of space. Even as the craft goes into its final throes of destruction, the crew reaches the Fortunate Rogue skillfully manned by Regal's Jawa co-pilot, Ruey. Blazing away from the wreck, they discover what has caused the disaster. The Hutt ship has crashed into one of a set of three enormous sphere ships unlike anything they have seen before. As they watch, these ships move into hyperspace, not by normal means, but apparently by some use of the Force itself. Rae-Lynn, the ship's engineer, is able to determine that the movement of these ships seems to disrupt the hyperspace lanes themselves-- while the Fortunate Rogue could follow the spheres, they opt to travel to the destination for the Hutt ship, Volgler Prime.

That turns out to be a backwater system with little to commend itself. Wren Marr speaks with the released Force user, Rilos. he explains that he remembers little or nothing of his childhood, save for being an orphaned on Tatooine. To survive Rilos fought and clawed his way up the ranks pit fighters. But he finds himself without any memory of his recent past or how he came to be abroad the transport. During a medical examination Rilos notes new subdermal tattoos-- they seem to be older and only now revealed by the systemic stress of the carbonite freezing. The two Force users discuss Rilos' abilities and the young man asks Marr if he can be trained in those ways. The Jedi reluctantly agrees.

After consulting at the outlaw space station, Regal and his crew find out about a Hutt operation on the planet Vogler Three, a world covered in constant storms. Regal manages a dangerous flight through the atmosphere tightly following a Hutt transport. A break in the storms reveals an ancient temple in the eye of a hurricane. The group enters and soon realizes that it is a Sith Temple. In the heart of it they find the leader of the Hutt operation and his dark ally, a Sith calling himself Darth Rune. These villains have been sacrificing the kidnapped Force sensitives in an attempt to open a shielded container in the temple. The two groups clash. Just as the heroes gain the upper hand a stray shot damages the temple's machinery. It opens the Sith holding device, but collapses the temple's protections. A hurricane held in place for thousands of years begins to tear the structure apart. Darth Rune escapes and the group barely makes it out of the temple. They have, however, been able to seize the items locked away-- a Sith Holocron and a strange crystal sphere of Force power. The markings on the sphere suggest the lost precursor race of the Rakata created it.

With an intuition that the Rakata artifact may be the key to what has happened, the group tracks down a rogue expert in the field-- Paven Lucksoul. They travel to his last known location, the planet of Lohrans, a step ahead of Hutt Bounty Hunters. On Lohrans they discover Lucksoul has been arrested for illegal trafficking in artifacts. Exhausting other means, the heroes desperately arrange a jailbreak. They get Lucksoul out, but find their success cut short by the arrival of a Star Destroyer from The Crimson Empire, the most dangerous Imperial remnant. Admiral Drums demands the planetary authorities turn Lucksoul over to him, unaware the archaeologist has been taken by the heroes.

Captain Regal and his crew press Lucksoul for an explanation. He reveals that various experts on the Rakata have vanished over the last several years-- with hints of Crimson Empire involvement. Lucksoul believes the Empire is seeking out expertise in the long fallen Rakata, those who first used the Force. Any who would not ally with them have met an unpleasant end. Lucksoul had uncovered a Rakata site here-- and had been trying to avoid Imperial entanglements. He believes the Imperials will try to seize those ruins and his unfortunate assistant awaiting his return.

The group heads to the Rakata temple, one step ahead of the Imperial forces. There they find Paven's assistant, Alivan Vane, a researcher with strange half-face tattoos that seem familiar. As the group battles the temple's guardians, Rae-Lynn deciphers some of the charts and diagrams concealed in the temple. They form a star chart directing them to a system in the Core-- a location corresponding to the markings on Rilos' body. With the Imperial forces closing, Paven reveals his own fraud as an expert-- with his assistant Vane possessing real knowledge. They drop Lucksoul into the woods for the Imperials and make a desperate attempt to break through the planetary blockade. The Fortunate Rogue takes heavy damage, but the sudden arrival of a Hutt fleet (including Darth Rune) allows them to make their escape. However even as they do so Rilos and Marr feel a strange and cold presence in the Force from aboard the Star Destroyer.

Having escaped the Crimson Empire's grip, the Fortunate Rogue heads to the planet of Quel Dor to seek out repairs. There, Wren Marr takes Rilos to meet his own master, the Jedi Knight Scryre Ossaki. Marr's own incomplete training as a Jedi is revealed, his master having sent him away because of a darkness he saw in his student. Ossaki explains why he reacted so strongly to that: before Marr, his previous student had fallen into the dark side and become the Sith known as Darth Rune. Master Scryre feared the same thing for Wren Marr and so overacted to his later apprentice's failings. Now convinced of his mettle, Scryre calls Marr a Jedi and bless Rilos' training in the ways of the Force. He warns them that Darth Rune had once allied with the Crimson Empire, but had split from them for unknown reasons. Finally the Jedi Master tells them that if anything should happen to him, they should seek out his own master, the venerable Jedi, Luke Skywalker.

Meanwhile Rae Lyn repairs the ship while Grohl, the Wookie medic, repairs the injured crew. HK-97 and the Captain dig for more information. They locate the sector pointed to by the Rakata ciphers-- a dangerous and hidden place. From an ancient rogue constructor droid they learn it held a secret base built during the height of the Empire. Protected by dangerous gravatic currents, only coded Imperial beacons permitted ships to reach it through hyperspace. These would now be long extinguished. Pressing as to the base's purpose, the Droid reveals that last of the Cloner race, the Kaminoa, were secretly sent there after having been nearly eliminated by Imperial purges. With that in mind, Captain Regal tracks down an agent of the New Republic to warn them about the Sphere ships and their threat to hyperspace navigation. In the exchange of information the group learns that the struggle between the New Republic and the Crimson Empire has blossomed into full scale conflict. The Crimson Empire struck against the Hutt after they refused an alliance. The Empire unleash a weapon which disrupted travel within the core Hutt systems and set a sun to nova. The New Republic, fearing what other weapons the Crimson Empire might have, have geared themselves for a full-scale offensive.

Captain Regal consults his crew and they decide to head to this mysterious system in an effort to untangle these secrets. After some hesitation, Vane reveals that she knows of Darth Rune as well. The Sith is the father fled as a youth. While she had no force powers, her father marked her with echoes of his own tattos to show ownership and compel obedience. Despite this troubling revelation, Rae-Lynn and Vane figure out a way to use the Rakata Force artifact to transport the Fortunate Rogue to the system past the gravtic disturbances...they hope. With a brief prayer they throw the switch.

With blinding speed and a sense of folded space they find themselves at Mythus. Here two star systems slowly collide, creating dangerous gravities and currents. A long-range scan uncovers a facility on one of the planets. There they find an enormous Imperial Science Complex, devoid of people and seemingly in standby mode. A short time into their careful exploration they realize that this place was devoted to a singular cloning project. Eventually Rae-Lynn leads the group to an unsecured data station in the heart of the facility-- activating the hologram recording of a decrepit Kaminoan: Noval Main.

Main talks of the history of the facility and its singular purpose: overcome the problems of cloning Force users. Perhaps one in a million times, maybe fewer, gifts of the Force will arise pass to a clone. Lord Vader opted for a brute force solution and built this complex to clone one person, a Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. The Empire secretly constructed it as a self-sustaining penal colony for the remaining Kaminoans. And it did sustain itself, cut off from news of the fall of the Empire. As years and then decades passed it continued operating, processing clones, raising them, testing them and then destroying the failures. Then perhaps twenty years ago, an anomaly in the system caused the creation of twin clones-- a boy and a girl. They proved to have mighty Force powers. However the automated facility had been programmed to seek only a single force user. It launched the girl twin on an automated transport back to the Empire, an Empire long fallen. The male was to be destroyed, but Noval Main, the maddened last of Kaminoans, had other plans. He marked the clone with the location of the facility and launched him in a reserve craft released by the project's completion. Then Noval turned his attention to transforming the facility into a death-trap for Lord Vader and any of his agents who might come here.

With that the heroes find themselves caught as the complex seals, releasing the monsters Main created-- horrible hybrids built from shut down droids and whatever organics the late mad scientist could devise. They attempt a running escape only forced into a fight in a central chamber. The situation grows more grave when Darth Rune appears, having followed them. The battle is lengthy and dangerous with the self-repairing pressing their attack and Darth Rune tangling with both Jedi and the Wookie. However the duel ends in the favor of the heroes with Rune falling from multiple wounds.

With his last breath the Sith tells them that there is a greater threat than he out there. Rune wanted the power of the Dark Side to rule and control. But this new threat seeks destruction-- rather than control. He had joined with the Crimson Empire, using it to further his studies of the ancient Rakata technologies. There he'd found an apprentice in the form of a young girl with potent force powers. His own useless daughter, Allivan Vane would serve as handmaiden to his apprentice. Eventually Rune managed a research breakthrough, contacting remnants of the Rakata, or so it appeared. They called themselves the Decimators, bearing strange Force powers. They turned Rune's own apprentice against him and seduced the Crimson Empire with the new powers they possessed. The Sith fled to the Hutt to escape before his new enemies could destroy him. There he sought out other Rakata weapons to fight against the Decimators and make himself lord of the galaxy.

Then Rune dies, leaving the group with the potent and immediate threat that these Decimators and the Crimson Empire were even now planning an ambush against the gathered forces of the New Republic!

As Grohl tends to the wounded, the HK-97 and Rae-Lynn work hard to overcome the safety protocols on Darth Rune's ship. Once inside they ransack the Sith's databanks to understand the threat they face. They learn of the Crimson Empire's planned ambush of the New Republic battle fleet. With the powers of the three Decimator ships, they could scramble power systems and prevent any ship's escape. Rune plan to use the chaos of that battle to hijack one of the Sphere Ships. He had pursued the Rakata Force Globe for that reason: it could be used to seize control of a Decimator vessel. To that end, Rune arranged a false code beacon to allow him to slip in among the Crimson Empire preparations. Ra-Lynn strips that out and attaches it to the Fortunate Rogue. With time rapidly running out, the group makes another Force-driven jump into the void.

They appear amidst the chaos and fall in with the war ships forming up. The beacon workd, but only with judicious application of Captain Regal's charm. After close calls, the Fortunate Rogue docks aboard the target Decimator Ship. Their luck holds as the enormous vessel has only a skeleton crew, with most preparing for the coming offensive. The heroes lure several Stormtroopers onto their ship to knock them out and take their armor. However, Rilos shocks his mentor when he casually snaps the neck of his foe-- becoming visibly irritated at the others' reaction. Rae-Lynn slices into the data system and plots the fastest way to the bridge. They head there with all due speed.

Bursting through the doors, they take the bridge crew unawares. However they find the situation complicated by a multi-level control room, a dozen extra guards, dual control stations, and the presence of three Force users-- their first encounter with the Decimators. While they appear human, solder-like raised-metal tattoos and strange sphere weapons mark them as unlike any Force user they've seen before. Even as they clash, alert warnings activate as the New Republic fleet drops from hyperspace into the trap. Regal battles his way to the main controls, with Grohl fighting his way to the gunnery stations. Rae-Lynn places the Rakata Force Crystal into position with HK-97 laying down pin-point accurate covering fire. Marr and Rilos move around the battlefield trying to hold the enemy back as the Captain works to shift the balance of the conflict. Even as he moves the Decimator warship into position, a scream from Allivan Vane signals the arrival of a new enemy.

Artificer Quartz, Rilos' apparent sister and a Decimator convert, storms the bridge accompanied by two Force-wielding members of the Crimson Guard. She briefly takes control of Vane, setting her against Rae-Lynn. Regal focuses on piloting the ship, shouting for the others to keep them back. He lets loose several barrages, but then goes for a more desperate gamble. He tells Rae-Lynn to overclock the engines-- and send his vessel careening into the other two Sphere Ships-- banking his shot like a pool shark. In the midst of the noise and fury, Rilos finally confronts his sister-- giving her a single chance to turn away from her path. She declines and strikes at him. Rilos desperately parries and drives both of their light sabers into a nearby power junction. The resulting explosion throws him back and Quartz falls to her doom. The group gathers everyone and rushes back to the Fortunate Rogue. As the final two Sphere Ships collide- ramming the two Star Core Drives together in a massive explosion-- Captain Regal punches it and makes good their escape.

The New Republic Fleet survives the ambush, but one of the Decimator ships escape along with a portion of the Crimson Empire's forces. Aboard the Republic Flagship, Regal and the other receive the thanks of the Republic Agent they contacted on Quel-Dor. He asks if Regal believes this is over-- and the scene cuts to the medical bay where Wren Marr watches as Grohl fits his Padwan Rilos with an artificial hand to replace the one he lost in the explosion. Regal looks out at the damaged fleet and knows that it is not over.

Star Wars Darkening Rift Post-Mortem Part One

Star Wars Darkening Rift Post-Mortem Part Two

Star Wars Darkening Rift Post-Mortem Part Three

Sta rWars: Action Cards

Star Wars: Episode VII: The Darkening Rift

We're heading into the last session(s) of the Star Wars game I've been running using Action Cards. I thought I'd do a quick recap of the first six sessions. The game itself takes place a generation or two after Return of the Jedi. I told the players only to hold as canon anything in the movies, everything else would be at my discretion.

OPENING CRAWL
The Galaxy remains divided split between several factions. While THE NEW REPUBLIC attempts to restore faith in a central authority, it continues to battle with fragments of the Old Empire, including the DEEP CORE BASTIONS and Grand Mof Garrik's CRIMSON EMPIRE. The outer systems remain divided in their allegiance and many have taken advantage of the chaos. The increasing breakdown of hyperspace routes has only added to this isolation.

The Jedi remain a force of myth and legend, working behind the scenes and battling against grave suspicions. Standing apart from politics, the few Jedi Masters have sought out students in an attempt to bring stability to the galaxy. But force users represent a valuable commodity and a target for criminals and bounty hunters.

A handful of heroes have attempted to turn back the rising tide, fighting against these criminals including the HUTT SYNDICATE. They work to intercept them before they can strike at their targets, or if need be, rescue them from their clutches....

Quick Summary of the First Six Sessions
Captain Ryu Regal and his ship the Fortunate Rogue find themselves embroiled in events on a galactic scale beginning with a simple mission. They are hired by the Jedi Wren Marr to look into the matter of a criminal network who seem to be kidnapping force sensitives for some unknown purpose. They quietly track the ship of a smuggler who seems to be moving this very special human cargo. The smuggler rendezvous with a Hutt Slaver ship in a dead system. The heroes decide to board the ship, to rescue the prisoners and hunt for information. They find a skeleton crew on the ship and only one prisoner, frozen in carbonite. They release him just as the Hutt ship begins a jump to hyperspace. The resulting release of force energy from the awaken prisoner seems to disrupt the jump with disastrous results.

Regal and the others have to flee as the Hutt ship begins to fall apart. Regal's second, the droid HK-93, helps lead them through the parts of the vessel beginning to be exposed to the void of space. They reach the Fortunate Rogue and finally see what has happened. The Hutt ship has crashed into one of a set of three enormous sphere ships unlike anything they have seen before. As they watch, these ships move into hyperspace, not by normal means, but apparently by some use of the Force itself. Rae-Lynn, the ship's engineer, is able to determine that the movement of these ships seems to disrupt the hyperspace lanes themselves-- while the ship could follow the spheres, they opt to travel to the destination for the Hutt ship, Volgler Prime.

That turns out to be a backwater system with little to commend itself. Wren Marr speaks with the released force user, Rilos. Orphaned on Tatooine at a young age, Rilos was forced into a life of pit fighting. How he came to be abroad the transport, he is not sure. Rilos asks Marr if he can be trained in the ways of the Force and the Jedi reluctantly agrees. Meanwhile Regal and his crew find out about a Hutt operation in the system on the planet Vogler Three.

Vogler Three turns out to be a world covered in constant storms. Regal manages a dangerous flight in following a Hutt transport-- leading them to an ancient temple in the eye of a hurricane. They enter, and soon realize that it is a Sith Temple. At the heart of it they find the leaders of the Hutt operation and their dark ally, a Sith named Darth Rune. Apparently they have been sacrificing the kidnapped force sensitives in an attempt to open an ancient Sith holding device. The two groups clash, with the heroes gaining the upper hand when a stray shot damages the machinery of the temple. It opens the Sith safe, but also brings down the protections around the temple, releasing a hurricane held in place for thousands of years. Darth Rune escapes and the group barely makes it out of the temple. They have, however, been able to seize the items locked away-- a a Sith Holocron and a sphere of Force power which seems to have been created by the lost precursor race of the Rakata.

Feeling that the Rakata artifact may be the key to what has happened, the group tracks down a rogue expert in the field, Paven Lucksoul. They travel to his last known location, the planet of Lohrans, a step ahead of Hutt Bounty Hunters. On Lohrans they find that Lucksoul has been arrested for illegal trafficking in artifacts. Exhausting other means, they arrange a jailbreak. They get Lucksoul out, but their success is cut short by the arrival of a Star Destroyer from the Imperial remnant, The Crimson Empire. Admiral Drums demands the planetary authorities turn Lucksoul over to them, not knowing he has been taken by the heroes.

Captain Regal and his crew press Lucksoul for an explanation. He reveals that various experts in the matter of the Rakata have vanished over the last several years-- with the Crimson Empire seemingly behind many of those vanishings. He believe they want expertise in the long fallen Rakata, those who first used Force powers, for themselves. They've eliminated any who would not join with them. Lucksoul also explains that he has uncovered a Rakata site here-- and that his assistant is still there. He believes the Imperials will try to seize that site.

The group heads to the Rakata temple, one step ahead of the Imperial forces. There they find Paven's assistant, Alivan Vane, a woman with a strange background and half-face tattoos that seem familiar. They battle the temple's guardians and the engineer Rae-Lynn manages to decipher some of the messages buried in the temple. They point to a location in the Core, a place that strangely corresponds to markings on Rilos' body. They also find out that Paven is more of a fraud than he appeared to be with Vane actually more of an expert. They drop Lucksoul into the wood for the Imperials and make a desperate attempt to break through the planetary blockade. The ship takes heavy damage, but they manage to use the timely arrival of a Hutt fleet (including Darth Rune) to make their escape. However even as they do so, Rilos and Marr feel a strange presence in the Force aboard the Star Destroyer.

Having escaped the Crimson Empire's grip, the Fortunate Rogue heads to the planet of Quel Dor to seek out repairs. There, Wren Marr takes Rilos to meet his own master, the Jedi Knight Scryre Ossaki. Marr's own incomplete training as a Jedi is revealed, his master having sent him away having seen a darkness in him. Ossaki reveals why he reacted so strongly to that. He tells of his former student, the one who fell into the dark side and became the Sith known as Darth Rune. Master Scryre feared the same thing for Wren Marr and so perhaps overacted to his later apprentice's failings. Scryre called Marr a Jedi and gives his blessing for him to train Rilos in the ways of the Force. He warns them that Darth Rune had been allied with the Crimson Empire, but has split from them. Finally he tells them that if anything should happen to him, they should seek out his own master, the venerable Jedi, Luke Skywalker.

Meanwhile Rae Lyn repairs the ship while Grohl, the Wookie medic repairs the injured crew. HK_97 and the Captain look into the current situation. They locate the sector pointed to by the Rakata ciphers-- a dangerous and hidden place. It was apparently a hidden base in the days of the Old Empire. Protected by dangerous gravatic currents with cloaked Imperial beacons as the only means of reaching it through hyperspace. The last of the Cloner race, the Kaminoa, were secretly sent there after having been nearly eliminated by Imperial purges. They also learn that the struggle between the New Republic and the Crimson Empire seems to be on the rise. The Empire struck against the Hutt who would not apparently ally with them, unleashing a weapon which disrupted hyperspace travel within the systems and set a sun to nova. The New Republic, fearing what other weapons the Crimson Empire might have have pull together for a full-scale offensive against them.

After much consultation, the group decides to head to this mysterious system in an effort to untangle these secrets. Vane reveals that she knows of Darth Rune as well, that he was her father but that she managed to escape from him. While she had no force powers, her father marked her with echoes of his own tattos to show ownership and compel obedience. Despite this troubling revelation, Rae-Lynn and Vane figure out a way to use the Rakata Force artifact to transport the Fortunate Rogue to the system...they hope. With a brief prayer they throw the switch.

And they find themselves in the Mythus system, a nearly dual-star grouping of dangerous gravities and currents. They scan and discover a facility on one of the planets. They head there and find an enormous Imperial Science Complex, devoid of people and seemingly in standby mode. They enter carefully and soon realize that this place has been devoted to a singular cloning project. Rae-Lynn leads the group to an unsecured data station in the heart of the facility where they trip off the hologram recording of a decrepit Kaminoan, Noval Main.

Main talks of the history of the facility and its singular purpose. It was established here to overcome the problem of cloning force users. Force powers do not consistently transfer when a person is cloned. Perhaps one in a million times, maybe fewer, force sensitivity will arise in a clones. This place had been built by Lord Vader to clone one person, a Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. The facility was built to be a self-sustaining penal colony for the remaining Kaminoans, cut off from news of the fall of the Empire. It continued on, process clones, raising them, testing them and then destroying the failures. Until an anomaly in the system caused the creation of twin clones, a boy and a girl. They proved to have mighty force powers. However the automated facility only sought a single force user. It launched the girl on an automated transport to another secret facility of the long fallen Empire. The other was to be destroyed, but Noval had other plans. He marked the clone with the location of the facility and sent it out in the reserve launch which had been released by the successful completion of the project. Then Noval turned his attention to turning the facility itself into a death-trap for Lord Vader and any of his agents who might come here.

With that the heroes find themselves caught and the complex begin to shut doors and release monsters created by the last on the Kaminoans-- horrible hybrid made up of the facilities robots and whatever organics the late mad scientist could devise. They attempt a running escape only to be trapped in a large chamber and forced into a fight. The situation grows more grave when Darth Rune appears, having followed them. The battle is lengthy and dangerous with the self-repairing robots posing a major threat and Darth Rune tangling with both Jedi and the Wookie. However the duel ends in the favor of the heroes with Rune falling from multiple wounds.

With his last breath he tells them that there is a greater threat than he out there. Rune wanted the power of the Dark Side to rule and control. But this new threat seeks destruction rather than control. He had served the Crimson Empire, using it to further his studies of the ancient Rakata technologies. He'd found an apprentice in the form of a young girl at an abandoned Imperial facility, a girl with potent force powers. His own daughter, Allivan Vane had proven worthless to him, so he'd made her the handmaiden to his apprentice. Eventually Rune had been able to find and contact remnants of the Rakata, or so it appeared. They were the Decimators, possessing strange force powers. They turned Rune's own apprentice against him and seduced the Crimson Empire with the new powers they possessed. He'd fled to the Hutt to escape before they could destroy him. There he's sought out other Rakata weapons to fight against the Decimators and make himself lord of the galaxy.

Then Rune died, leaving the group with the potent and immediate threat that these Decimators and the Crimson Empire were even now planning an ambush against the gathered forces of the New Republic!

Waving the Hands and Glossing the Details

In response to my last post, Gene wrote:

My inclination is to ban "Lie Detection" and repla...from Age of Ravens Comments by Gene Ha

My inclination is to ban "Lie Detection" and replace it with "Polygraph". Which is what the real world version of "Lie To Me" does.

No one can tell absolutely if a statement is true or false, or even if the subject really believes it. What they can do is read emotional cues.

The PC investigator asks Barclay if he killed Chino. Barclay has a wincing micro-expression when asked. When he says he doesn't know, he furrows his brow on the first syllable of the sentence.

He could be wincing because he thinks he's caught, or because he had a secret gay relationship with Chino. He could be overly controlling his expression (the furrowed brow) because he knows who killed him, or simply because he suspects his gang boss and knows he'll be killed if he gives anything away.

Gene’s comments give me a decent jumping off point for my next question—about where and when we do our handwaving in rpgs. What you’re suggesting falls more into the kind of approach I like. I see two ways to handle this. If you have a check-based system for the game, you can provide the additional descriptive information to the player based on a successful check. On the other hand, you could also take a more “Gumshoe” approach, in which case when a player with the particular Human Perception talent interacts with a target, you provide the additional information or description. Or that ability could be used in a “matrix argument” for the player attempting to get more information from the target. In this case it might be framed thusly: “OK, he’s said that but I have significant investment in behavior reading—using that can I get some signals about what he’s hiding?”.

I guess one of the interesting questions here is what level the GM narrates on. Does one try to describe the facial tics and quirks and provide some insight on those or does one simply narrate the results (i.e. “from his reaction he seems worried about X” or even “he’s worried about X”). That’s a question I’m curious about: what governs our decisions about reductions in rpgs. I’d like to think it is thematically focused- i.e. I provide the kind of detail appropriate to the genre or narrative type the game is emulating. But I think there are a lot of other factors going on there: the beat of the scene, how invested the player is to the action, how relevant the moment is, other player’s impatience, player knowledge of the topic I’m detailing, etc.

I do think one of the potential sources for friction between players and the GM or even between players comes from differing expectations about handwaving. Now normally we’re conscious of the potential tension coming from some players thinking some things should or shouldn’t be played out at the table. Players sighing when one players wants to actually do the negotiation for purchasing some things or getting some information. But in this case I’m talking about an even greater micro-level: how much can be glossed over, especially in terms of skills/abilities, when players play things out. As an example, in the Exalted campaign I ran, Rob went to some trouble to describe “contextual” songs for his character's musical compositions. By referencing RW songs he tried to convey his intent. I tried to keep that in mind as I described his relative success. That was a place where I could have easily glossed over the work he'd put into that-- and in effect discount his efforts. As another older example, when I ran a street-level supers game I had a player who was notorious for switching detail frames in investigations. He'd make his Investigation or Search roll at a scene, and if that failed, he'd start describing what his character was actually doing to investigate as if that was a separate attempt. If I noticed what he was doing, I'd tell him he'd already done those actions. Some times he'd switch it around-- describing actions and then moving to the roll level to double up his chances.

In trying to figure out what level of detail or glossing we want, I can point to one specific difficulty narrating and adjudicating scenes. If I don’t know the player’s objective in the scene, I have a hard time shaping what’s happening to a positive effect. Often I end up throwing in problems or obstacles just as a matter of playing the scene out. The obstacles seem like a logical thing, but they end up getting in the way of the player’s plan. Had I known what the player had been going for in the first place, I could have glossed over that detail. Instead now we have the choice of my redacting or backstepping on what I’ve said, having the player need to make big changes in what they wanted to do, or having them decide not to take the action usually with some frustration. In this case what has happened is that I’ve accidentally said “No” to their plans without intending it—because I wasn’t sure what the player was doing. For example, the player has constructed a plan but hasn't given me any sense of what's going on and has avoided asking me questions in order to not tip their hands. If I describe the presence of something like a guard or the like, they may read that as me simply trying to trip them up.

Not giving me a heads up about one's objective in a scene now strikes me as a strange thing, but I can understand where that comes from. It comes from years of playing with GMs who would shift the stakes and situation to compensate for the players actions-- but in a negative, not a positive way. Though some might disagree, I honestly believe I work at not doing that. I'll admit that I was as guilty of that as any GM years ago, but I think I have a better and more secure handle on my approach now. But if players have played with antagonistic GMs or if the player inherently can't develop a sense of trust, then that can be a problem. Another reason for doing this may come less from paranoia and more from valuing that surprise or oneupsmanship. That may be what they enjoy as the challenge of the game and so don't like to tell the GM what their goal is or what they are doing until the moment of execution. That can be great at times, but is a more risky approach. My reaction to that may also stem from my own valuing of collective action and sharing over singular action or self-focus at the table, I'm not sure.

The Lies of Reading People

So a brief digression to consider the impact of perception and perceptual concerns at the gaming table. I might be running a little far afield before I come back to my point. I've been watching Lie to Me on Netflix recently. I like crime procedurals generally-- unfortunately my particular viewing habits mean that I tend to burn out on shows pretty fast-- I mean I'll watch them all, but I won't like them as much as it goes along. I tend to watch things in a bundle-- as I've done with CSI, Numbers, Law and Order(s), and Bones. Good and interesting characters will keep me hooked for a time, but eventually that will wear off. More and more as I watch I'll be conscious of the magic and super-powers inherent in the TV presentation of these things, most of which revolves around either Mentat-level deductive powers and knowledge or technology decades beyond what's presently possible. In the case of Lie to Me, we have a little less of that tech voodoo, but we do have super-powers-- however they don't feel quite as out of left field as the others. Tim Roth does a pretty good job of selling the premise, one which I was initially skeptical of. Essentially he can read people's reactions, scary well.

Which is interesting in rpg terms in that one of the skills/abilities I normally limit is lie detection-- even fallible lie detection as a skill. That's one of those things that has a pretty high chance of eliminating a whole class of stories and tensions. I'd put danger sense, fast regeneration and the ability to track people perfectly as some others that players have to convince me pretty seriously about if I'm going to allow them in the game. Obviously solid and clear lie detection can harm a game. But Lie Detection based on a roll creates an additional set of problems. There are a couple of ways to handle it-- the first being that the player rolls, in which case they know the results. Or there's a resistance roll for the NPC which can be an irritating proposition for the player. Nothing like rolling a success and then having it negated. Especially in a social situation where the player generally makes fewer rolls and hence any negation reduces a larger percentage of their action/play time.

Or you have the classic “GM rolls hidden” version. That's perhaps a little more palatable, but ultimately unsatisfying to the player. It is a blind game for them. Players can't actually act on their ability with any certainty. Mind you, they could play based on whatever the GM tells them, but at that point it becomes more of a narrative device. I don't like either of these choices-- and my approach is instead slightly differently. Generally I like to give players access to social skills which allow me to add information or inflection to their interactions. Usually I've borrowed the skill “Human Perception” from the Cyberpunk rpg. I like the idea of being able to make small reads that can give a player a clue about the situation. I think social interactions can be hard to pull off. I try to give players mechanical fall-backs: the ability to ask for further information, to gain a reinterpretation of the materials, to gain a sense of agendas or even get to replay a scene, depending on their skills. Some players make use of these options, but others avoid them. They seem to react to taking up those options as giving in or admitting defeat. I've found that a little odd in the past, but stubbornness of various kinds can be an especially damning problem at the table-- depending on the flavor of it. Some I can play with and off of while others produce a stalemate or shut-down.

But I'm kind of coming back to the point I started with. Lie to Me, especially if you watch a number of episodes in a row, reveals a basic formula for about half of the episodes. The problem arises, the investigators interview the subject(s) and ask them a question. The subject lie/tells the truth-- and the investigators are assumed to have perfect ability in this (mostly). The determined truth/untruth reveals that the interviewee is to blame/not to blame. Then other evidence arises which contradicts this. Then they suddenly realize that the question they've asked is ambiguous or has other answers. And the cycle begins anew. You find yourself simply sighing when they ask one of these open ended questions-- knowing that's going to be the loophole they will drag the plot through.

Why wouldn't this work in an rpg? Because players tend to ask very closed questions-- or else immediately realize that their question and answer has actually given them nothing. I ascribe some of that to gamers fondness for logical puzzles and years of trying to work out what would be the most ironclad wording for a wish without repercussions.

But there are some things to be gathered from the series-- little details which can be thrown into a game to enhance verisimilitude. And that's honestly what the show is selling-- a kind of story about how behaviors and speech can be read on the human body. They sell it like it is really true-- but in a couple of cases I've seen them use research (like a point about 'gaydar') as if it were solid, certain and with concrete applications which is less than honest. But at the table were selling a version of the truth as well. I make stuff up all the time about history, science and physical phenomena and run the game as if it is true. I'm glad most of my players don't have iPhones and immediate access to Wikipedia.

I want to continue on this track a little further-- tangential, but still connecting, about the question of at what level players and GMs do their hand-waving about elements. We'll be back to that.

The State of the Game 2010 Part One

So, while I blog about other things (and will in the future again), I mostly blog about gaming. So after a break, I thought I'd begin with a little review of the state of the games currently: what's going on now; what I see as the span for that; and what I'm thinking about for the future. Also some general thoughts about rpgs and those I'm interested in.

Right now I'm running five games. That's one more than I'm really comfortable with, but the extra one is an experimental short-run game. I don't mind doing those atop my normal schedule, especially if the group is not my usual one. I'm also doing some part time (effectively full time) temp work which has changed up my schedule. And I haven't smoked since mid-Feb.

Libri Vidicos
The Steampunk Fantasy Harry Potter-inspired campaign continues one. I believe we have been playing that campaign for three years now. We've just come into Year Three of the campaign, of a planning five school years. So we're at the mid-point of the series in some ways: the Empire Strikes Back or Goblet of Fire moment. Now normal narrative arcs would suggest that this is the lowest point for the characters. They have some successes, but the general level of things gets worse and darker. I don't think that holds as true for a role-playing game. For one thing the experience, while it fits into a structure, is heavily subdivided and drawn out. A campaign chapter is closer to the experience of a television show in that there's strong variability to the tone and story approaches from episode to episode. If you watched a dramatic show that stayed in the same mode for the whole season it would get boring-- and if it tried to maintain the darkness of a middle chapter for the entire season you'd become mentally exhausted. Accordingly, while there a little more struggle to be had in this third year of the game/narrative I don't want to dishearten anyone.

On the other hand, the characters are evolving-- moving from simply being children or teens to having some adult considerations and worries. I don't believe that arc will complete over the course of the campaign, but there will be and have been some evolutionary changes. We had an interesting session a few weeks back where the group slipped into a more classic paranoid gaming approach, rather than a more genre appropriate cinematic approach. I was notable and we talked about that the following week, figuring out some reasons why that might have happened. This week we had Gene sit in to run his regular NPC, Leather Blunt. It was a tricky session that I'll do a heavier post-game analysis of somewhere in the future.

My plan remains to have five campaign years for the game. How long that will take in real time is an open question. I'd like to have them take around a real year: 24-26 sessions, but that may not be possible given schedules and the amount of stuff we have to cover. What comes after LV? I have no idea and won't begin thinking or worrying about that for at least another couple of years.

Sunday Third Continent
This game is bi-weekly, as are the rest of my games. The modified version of the Action Cards system continues to work pretty well. I made some modifications to the magic system that make it easier. The dice based damage system still works decently well. There's an interesting tension in the system between the low-detail, high trust of the basic game engine and the detail most associated with the high fantasy adventure genre. I've added new profession track options recently that opened up a number of things, and I hope to have more of that (hybrid class tracks) relatively soon.

We had some player changeover and got Scott slotted into the game quite easily and well. He had a great concept that both fit with the group and gave him an easily excuse to join. The last several sessions have been more focused on life in the city rather than some of the classic questing and dungeon adventuring we've been doing. That's been a nice change of pace. We've have a number of great scenes of late where the players have completely shifted to course of things based on clever choices, great use of abilities and thematically appropriate draw results. Literally once per session recently the direction I'd generally imagined/anticipated got completely taken over. It is nice to see some thoughtful reactions from a diverse group and people stepping up to the plate to overcome obstacles. I hope I've been able to provide them with enough challenge and some interesting NPCs.

Originally I'd picture the game as lasting about a year in real time. However now I suspect it will last longer than that. At a guess I bet we've done 14-16 sessions. I'd guess we have at least that many more to go. I want to make sure I give Scott a decent chance to develop his character. The problem, of course, is that such a time frame would put the end of the campaign close to the end of the year holidays, when schedules get thrown up in the air. I'll either need to close it out before then or extend it a little further to keep satisfying momentum to the campaign. I don't like having too big a break before running the last several session of a campaign-- I've had to do that before any it really weakens things.

Once the Sunday game wraps up I have two ideas. I ran a Scion short-campaign with this group. I'm thinking I'd like to return to that. I'd like to run another chapter in a different city. With the first part, I tried to play out the themes and tropes of Las Vegas. I think another chapter could explore the kinds of stories of another city, in another part of the country. On the other hand I've also been thinking about the Exalted Dragonblooded campaign I ran set in Crux. We've held off on playing that campaign again because we lost Brady, whose character Lupita played a crucial and important role. On the one hand, I don't love the idea of running that campaign without her, but on the other hand, it is a setting I really like and one I put a good deal of effort into. I would like to return to it in some form and a number of the Sunday group played in the earlier version of Crux. I'm not sure if I would just continue on; do a partial reboot or do a full reboot-- there are arguments to be made for each approach. Sherri asked if I'd go back to Storyteller and I might. On the other hand, I've told her that if I do run that again and she wanted to play it using Action Cards, she'd have to come up with the adaptation rules and mechanics.

Next Post: Wushu, Changeling, Star Wars and others.