Games played in 2006

Descriptions of the games we played on 2006. See the games we have played page for descriptions of more recent games.

October 3rd to November 28th 2006

The Unwanted

Using the recently published Deadlands: Reloaded setting for the Savage Worlds game rules, this campaign features a rotten bunch of hombres in a dark & twisted version of the Wild West. Tougher than rawhide, meaner than a rattlesnake, you and your posse travel the untamed west seeking their forune in any odd job that falls their way. Now a real pot o' gold is yours for the taking, but the people who already have their paws on it ain't about to let go for no greenhorns from back east! Go bounty hunting, duel with mad scientists, hunt giant worms the size of locomotives and uncover a dark secret which has festered under the ground for 2 years...

Proposed by James Mullen

The Jineev Jihad

Paul Maud'dib has overthrown the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. Now his Fedaykin death-commandoes are spreading across the galaxy, converting countless worlds to Maud'dib's rule. This is the story of one of these worlds.

We'll be using Burning Sands: Jihad setting for Burning Wheel, which is set in the gap between Dune and Dune Messiah. The PCs will be Fedaykin attempting to overthrow the noble rulers of a particlar planet, and we'll be playing the terrorism phase of the jihad.

Some supplementary information is on the Jineev Jihad page.

Proposed by Neil Smith

SOCS

It was the year 2000 and we were all out celebrating the coming of the New Year, but it was the coming of another sort that interrupted parties the worldwide. Suddenly, without even the slightest warning, they appeared – massive ships floating in the air above all the major cities from Cape Town to Cairo. And there they waited.

Yes, we’ve all seen ‘Independence Day’, watched ‘First Wave’, read books or even role-played about alien invasions, but this was the real thing. And yet, they did nothing.

At first, there were riots, protests, and a media frenzy like no others – all surrounding these new arrivals who did not respond to communication of any sort. They simply hovered, using a technology unknown to us, over our cities where their shadow continued to sow confusion and discord.

The governments of the world did not know what do to about them. Nuclear strikes were out of the question – attacking them must surely result in reprisals – and, when one of the banana African republics did just that, their weapons had seemingly no affect on the Alien technology. If only Will Smith could really save the world!

With little to go on, you’ve been gathered together from various sources (military, technical, medical, academic etc) in a bid to prepare or what may happen.

SOCS will be a game with many paths, options and possible outcomes and uses a modified Cyberpunk 2020 rule-set (not the Theme, just the rules, weapons etc). So, if you want to try and rid the world of the Alien invasion by flying your biplane into its death ray, then get to it. If you want to save a portion of humanity in a hidey-hole deep underground while the cybernetic monsters beat at the front door, then you’re the right people to organise it. Regardless, the future will be in your hands.

Proposed by Kevin Dennis

18th July to 5th September 2006

Identity Crisis

Ingredients: the restless dead, plots within plots, corrupt cops, supersized hamburgers, seedy hotels, more money than God, madness, necromancy, rampaging mobs, tube trains, lakes, maps, cosmic conflict, murder, lots of body odour, and magick. Cooking Guidelines: take all of the above with a group of 4-6 strangers in a tube train, gently bring to the boil over eight weeks and let loose upon the world. Best served with fries. An 'Unknown Armies' game set in London in the modern day.

Proposed by Matt Sanderson

The Mountain Witch/My Life With Master

Two short games, neither of which would fill a long block on their own, combine into eight weeks of fun! The Mountain Witch has a group of ronin, each with a troubled past, hired by frightened villagers to travel to the fortress of the mountain and defeat the evil that awaits there. The game revolves around trust and betrayal, and has been described as The Seven Samurai meets Reservoir Dogs. My Life With Master casts the PCs as the minions of an evil master who commands them to do horrible things until either their self-loathing consumes them or they find some kind of redemption. Plenty of personal horror and black comedy all round.

Proposed by Scott Dorward

Time Masters

After the 100 year Time Wars, The Time Corps were established, an organisation whose sole mission was to travel backwards in Time and restoring history to the way it 'should' be. You were plucked from the time stream to serve as an agent of the Time Corps because you like all Time Agents, have a paranormal talent. Everything else about your character is negotiable.

This is a Sapphire and Steel esque game (Checked James Mullen wasn't going to be running one) and will feature character advancement throughout the weeks. The original game was created in 1984 by Pacesetter Games.

Proposed by James Hollywood

Children of the Glyphs

For thousands of years, the lords of Chaos have ruled unchallenged over all reality. For thousands of years, the lords of Chaos have used the power of the Glyphs to enforce their will. For thousands of years, nothing has changed. But, unbeknownst to any now living, the ten thousand years of peace the first emperor promised are now over. The time of reckoning is at hand.

The thousand universes of the Empire and its various tributaries define civilisation. The Ten Great Houses define the Empire. The Glyph-Wielders define the Houses. Of this generation, you are the chosen ones. In you rests the potential to save the Empire... or to damn it. But who or what has chosen you, and why?

A game for 4 to 7 players. Uses a variant on the Amber diceless roleplaying system.

Proposed by Louisa McGuinness

2nd May to 20th June 2006

DICE

“I prefer to live in a country that’s small and old, and where no-one would ever have the nerve to wear a cape in public, whether they could leap tall buildings in a single bound or not.” John Constantine

In 2003 George Bush visited the British Isles and insisted that Britain have it’s own super powered force in order to stop terrorist threats and even offered one of America’s top super teams, The Western American Triumph Society to protect British interests. Britain declined and resurrected its own Meta-human program and assigned it’s ‘recruits’ to DICE (Department of Intelligence and Counter-Espionage) headed by Major Bill Prick, who thinks all Meta-humans should be put down. He reminds the team constantly that they are not superheroes; they are merely civil servants protecting Britain from Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction. During the eight week run, the team will face an alien invasion of Stonehenge, search for the Holy Grail which a drunken Prince Andrew has lost and greet Cthulhu at Milton Keynes train station. (Why did you think the road to the station is called Elder Gate?) The characters will be three dimensional, non comic book style superheroes with all the flaws that being British can give to them. All characters will have full backgrounds worked out and the game will be based on the classic Games Workshop ‘Golden Heroes’ rpg.

Proposed by James Hollywood

How I Saved The Planet On The Path To Enlightenment

An Over the Edge game that allows players to start as residents of Al Amarja and uses a new batch of conspiracies & secrets; the geography and politics of the island (in other words, what is 'seen') stay the same, but the things taking place in the background (the hidden things that the PCs usually end up getting sucked into) are all changed. Themes of the campaign include enviromentalism versus consumerism, time travel, the occult, the privacy of the individual and the concept of identity. This campaign may also incorporate the one-off scenario As Light As A Feather, which is my take on the ultimate Over the Edge game.

As an advisory to potential players, the key-point that all PCs should share is a desire to look for answers to metaphysical questions; each character should be at a point in their lives where some form of enlightenement would be welcome and they are at least open to the possibility that this may come from a spiritual direction, though preferably they will be actively pursuing that line of enquiry in some form.

Proposed by James Mullen

The Annex for the Elucidation of Eternal Splendours

A Tekumel game. The Palace of the Realm is the civil service in the Tsolyani Empire, the Empire of the Petal Throne; it has sites in every major Tsolyani city and town. The scribes and bureaucrats in the Palace attend to all the internal affairs of the Empire. One department within the Palace is the Annex for the Elucidation of Eternal Splendours, who deal with cataloguing and recording the myriad items that surface during archaeological digs, building works, and the like. The PCs will all be functionaries in this civil service.

The trouble is, the Tsolyani Empire is only the latest empire to occupy this land in the 60,000 years of recorded history. That history was often bloody and violent and involved gods, demons, and continent-shattering magics. So some of the items that turn up in the Annex for the Elucidation of Eternal Splendours are Pot-Sherds of Mass Destruction. When this happens, the other branches of the Palace (such as the counter-insurgency forces and the ruthless scholar-assassins) start to pay attention, as do legion commanders from the Palace of War (including the Omnipotent Azure Legion, the secret police), the independent legion commanders, the representatives of the royal family (always at each others' throats), the heads of the powerful and quasi-state-like Temples, the leaders of the aristocratic Clans, the PCs' clan-cousins, and everyone else who can't get out of the way fast enough.

Life for the PCs is about to become very interesting (and perhaps very short).

Proposed by Neil Smith

14th February to 4th April 2006

The Splinter Isles

Bog standard FRPG as you've never seen it before! Putting the Dung back in Dungeons and the Drag into Dragons. See

• A dungeon!
• A dragon (or two)!
• A country that's been without it's king for 300 years!
• A chair you wouldn't want to sit in!
• Barbara the sea-monster!
• Gods living on top of mountains!
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves running a pub!

Take part in

• The origin of humanity!
• Slaying evil undead kings!
• Beer smuggling!
• Quarrying!
• Murder!

All this in a narrativist style, none of this "You're in a 10' wide corridor" malarkey. Hopefully it'll be a fun fusion of the style of Dogs in the Vineyard with D&D 3.5 but it could all go horribly wrong.

Proposed by Ashley Munday

Loose Toys

The year is 2075 and the creations of the SmarToy Corporation have found their way into many homes, becoming the must have for children everywhere. Marketed as 'companions & teachers', these intelligent robots are clothed in the plush and plastic of soft toys and action figures. Though very carefully programmed to learn and develop, and installed with large storage capacity thanks to 'fractal tree' chips, they are not self-aware...

Until the day they woke up to find that the human race had disappeared...

This game uses a modified version of Little Fears and follows a group of toys as they try to survive in a new world and get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the fate of humanity.

Proposed by James Mullen

Primetime Adventures: Santa Maria

A game where the players collaborate to create the greatest TV series that never was.

PTA plays like a cross between a traditional RPG and a storytelling game. The players take turns to create scenes that advance the story of the individual episode, an overall season arc and their characters' own agendas. The mechanics are based on conflict rather than task resolution, meaning that, for example, a big fight scene may come down to a single contest that determines not whether the participants take damage, but what dramatic resolution is reached and how. This isn't nearly as weird and complicated as it sounds!

The series we've settled on is Santa Maria, a family/crime drama set on an intrigue-soaked Carribean island. We also played a one-shot of Mooks, a reality show following the lives of employees of the Mooks, inc. employment agency, a company devoted to finding jobs for would-be henchmen, faceless guards or mad scientists' assistants.

See the Dog-Eared Designs site for more details.

Proposed by Scott Dorward

Infected

Played: on Tuesday 7th February 2006

GM: James Mullen

Players: Noah, Richard & Robin

Report: Infected - Report

PDF: http://www.geocities.com/rpgjunkie74/infected.pdf