Open RPG Day: Feng Shui 2 One-Shot

This Saturday, I ran Feng Shui 2 on the Open RPG Day in Sofia. 

A warehouse full of Red Lotus thugs, led by a sorcerous "dailo" is processing cannibalistic magical ingredients.

A ninja named Kenji is watching from the beams under the roof, as a police car crashes inside. Cai Tao, a cop from the Occult Investigations department jumps out and offers them a surrender.

Just as this happens, the back door opens, and Granny Hu (pictured below on the right) enters, holding a mobile phone. "Sorry, young man, but do you know how to read that message I've received?"

That's how the game began. Soon after, the thugs realised that Granny Hu has an alternate form. The one on the left is still Granny Hu!

(The player sketched the pictures herself - just to show me what her Creature looks like. You can see her DeviantArt on the picture).

And now a better shot of Granny Hu. Hoping the player would ink the monster, too, at some point...

And then they defeated the sorcerer who was sacrificing the mooks to protect himself, found clues for the plans of the Red Lotus, and discovered they all have a grudge with Big/Red/Fat Chu, a Lotus sorcerer. Oh, and there was a portal to the Netherworld.

Things proceeded from there, in typical Feng Shui manner. In the Netherworld, they learned about the Chi War (by meeting exiles). Kenji got hired by the Lotus as a hitman. The name of his first target was...Cai Tao. The head was to be delivered to Big Chu.

Of course, they improvised a news story proving that Cai Tao has been kidnapped, and went to meet him.

Kenji got cursed with financial ruin, but they killed Chu, who was the focus of their melodramatic hooks. The killing blows - delivered in the same shot - were both suitably bloody for HK cinema (explosions on both attacks).

And then Kenji took out an MP5K and shot the whole clip into Chu's body, for good measure. After that, he reloaded.

Threatening Kenji with ruin brings out the worst in him, I can report.

Yet another Open RPG Day...

We had another Open RPG Day. This one...didn't go so well. Or rather, not well at all.
To begin with, half the GMs that promised to run games, didn't come or pulled a last-minute cancellation.
Then one of the GMs that actually came and ran a game is actually considering to swear off GMing. It's because the players made it living chaos, and she didn't manage to rein them in.
I also asked her to run me through the same adventure she had prepared for them. Yes, I asked her to run the game one-on-one for me, without adjusting any difficulty. FWIW, it's urban fantasy.
They had used 4 hours and announced they can't solve it, the mystery is too hard. I solved it in 69 minutes by the clock, half of which I spent eating dinner and talking off-topic. With a character fashioned after Shang Tsung from the MK movie, because why not?

Frankly, I'm not too sure whether I'm going to run an Open RPG Day October edition. Maybe, but we shall see.

Third Monthly Open RPG Day 2013 in Sofia: On Mighty Thews

So, I've written on this blog that we had decided to conduct an RPG event in my home city of Sofia. Now, we've decided to make it a monthly one.
We call it Open RPG Day, because it's like Free RPG Day, except you don't get a quickstart for participating. Instead, we give you the opportunity to try a new game.
The GM has to explain the rules before the game starts, and you're better off assuming the people have never seen your game.

This time, I ran On Mighty Thews. The above is the map we created before play began, as the game instructs you to do.
The game started with them running after the army they were in has been decimated by the Raiders.
It ended with the Mischievous Amazon becoming the ruler in King's Whore Store, along with the practical healer, the extreme guy dead by the hand of another PC, the ambitious thief running away with extremely valuable emeralds.


Also, the new Amazon regent and the healer decided that they don't need to change the castle's name (which I named in memory of King Robert, I must admit). "We're women, but it just means the whores will be male now."
I call this "gender equality in action"!

Ran Tenra Bansho Zero on the second Open RPG Day 2013

Maybe you know what is going on in my home city. If so, I'm just describing today's events.
Maybe you don't care. If so, sorry, this post isn't for you.
For those that don't know, but care, we're making an Open RPG Day. We actually borrowed the idea from Free RPG Day, except we're not offering free materials. You just get to try new systems, settings and new GMs, all for free (bring your own snacks, though).
We're now hoping to make it a monthly event, too.

So, last time, I ran In Dark Alleys, which I talked about on that blog. Today was the time for Tenra Bansho Zero - we actually went to an anime convention and invited people that seemed interested.
Only a couple of them actually came to try RPGs, but at least some on my table were fans of the genre. And even one newbie is better than nothing, in my book.


So, what happened? Since TBZ is really character-focused, it makes sense to tell you about the stories of the individual PCs.

The Yoroi Armour Hunter had to leave early for RL reasons. Well, it happens. At least he saved a small girl from a village that has been devastated by an ayakashi.

The Annelidist doctor tried to help a man who has been infected with the Immortality Worm against his will. Turns out, the damiyo Ishikawa Hikaru has been using prisoners of war in this way, in order to create nearly inderstructible shock troops and spies. The guy is actually trampling the Southern Shinto Court, and is well-known for near-perfect intelligence services.
Except he had no idea how to remove an annelid like that one. So they went to Mount Hiro to converse with Tengu!
On the way, he found a village that has been devastated. He got an idea that this might be something supernatural, and left after taking the only survivor-a black chicken.
Then he heard the music of shamisen, and they prowled in this direction. After he met the woman, dressed as a geisha, who was practicing on a clearing, he realised she reminds him of his niece.
She viewed a man who didn't flinch at her being obviously an unnatural person-not many geisha practice lots of kms away from civilisation, in a mountain - and hoped against hope he can take her away, from a marriage she had come to abhor.
She also knew the tengu - drunkards and cads, all of them - and suggested she could introduce them. Oh, and it's better we leave before her husband is here...
So they left for Mount Hiro with the wife of the Green Dragon of the Hiro Mountain.
It didn't work. Avoiding him, I mean. They tried to run, he outran them. They tried to hide, and a wood spirit offered them to hide them - for a price. They refused to give him the immortal guy to eat, and he shouted. The Ayakashi came to see them.
It was actually his wife that opened the hostilities. The immortal guy tried to fight, though he only had a knife. The shapeshifting woman and her husband both exchanged lightning strikes, and took them, almost ignoring the PC.
That is, until he managed to hit the Green Dragon with his Talonfang worms, and rend him apart. His wife was at her last legs at this moment, but he managed to heal her and they met the tengu spirits.
Removing the immortality annelid was actually possible for them, but they didn't know how to implant it into our annelid user-and he had come to covet the power and safety this worm represented. So he kept it, hoping to be able to implant it himself some day, after research.
The scout, on the other hand, went back to his home village, and knew he's just a man. No more than a man. And this allowed him to share in the joys and griefs of others, which was what he wanted.
The ayakashi wife never got to sleep with her saviour - which almost disappointed her - but she was now free to study humans as she wished, changing her appearance to suit her.
Everybody was free, or had a new goal. It was a good work.

The kugutsu was set free by her master. The Ishikawa daimyo has come to take her, but her master claimed she needed to pass one more test. He left a samurai and went back to his castle.
The master, however, was disappointed with the daimyo and ordered her to put the samurai to sleep with some specially spiced tea, and run. As an obedient girl, she ran, taking only her soulgem katana and spare clothes. He had mentioned he'd run, himself.
When she looked back, she noticed there was a big fire in the house. Assuming her master had burned the samurai, she ran even faster, and reached next city around noon, dressed as a ronin.

The shinobi had been sent to dispatch a runaway ninja. He did, without major difficulty. The other guy didn't even have implanted soulgems!
So he brought his head back. Except there was nobody in that village, either. The people had been kidnapped, almost without signs of a struggle. There was a torn piece of cloth with the mon of Ishikaru.
He set to find them, and his first lead was what he suspected to be a false one. Nonetheless, he went to check on the armies of the war-like daimyo.
He reached the next city around noon, dressed as a trader.

The eyes of a ronin and a trader met in front of a city.
The ronin thought it was somebody she knew.
The trader thought that's a very nice boy, and wanted to screw him. He also noticed he had bribed the guards instead of showing a pass.
So they went to each other.
"Do I know you?"
"I would have remembered you."
And so, over a dish and a cup of sake, they reached an agreement that the trader would hire the ronin as a guard. While doing this, they proceeded to totally, utterly ignore the kijin veterans in the room.
Word of advice, don't ignore dangerous people, not look at them for long. Both mark you as targets.
And so their leader went to challenge them. They actually bought him sake, and invited everyone at their table, but then another social mistake lead to a duel.
"You sure you don't want more guards?"
"You think I can't manage?"
Ah well, that was quite in genre. And the fight was tetsubo against sword.
The sword won by cutting up the shoulder of the tetsubo-wielder in an aiuti strike, after having injured him already. Luckily, the kugutsu didn't suffer major broken bones, and healed on the way to the army.
Things changed when they passed through a battlefield-more of a skirmish, actually. The "guard" wanted to help anyone that might be still alive, and bury the rest. The "trader" wanted to know what kind of guard gets sick from the sight of dead bodies.
At the end, they saved a couple people and got directions to where the army of the Ishikawa had retreated to. The ninja made short work of finding them, and they had to devise a plan to enter it, in order to check for his missing relatives.
So the kugutsu offered herself as the bait. The ninja gladly "returned" her after "saving her" from her "abductors". They learned here that both the samurai and the kugutsu master had been killed in the fire.
Lots of lying later, they were waiting for the daimyo, and looking for ways to get around. The Kugutsu asked about the village, hinting the people in it might have something to do with her abductors. When it was confirmed they were here - "forced recruitement" as they put it - the ninja forged a document about them, threw it away and sneakily followed the guy who found it. As expected, he hastily brought it to the overseer of the villagers.
The only trouble was, they were guarded by kongohki. And the shinobi actually had liked workinf for himself much better than being owned by his clan.
So he let them being recruited, and went to hire himself separately to the daimyo. After receiving 10% of the price of a kugutsu-Ishikawa never rips a working bounty hunter! - he was richer by 500 000 ryo, which basically meant he'd never need to work again.
The kugutsu wasn't too thrilled, but she had put her faith in the shinobi. Now she had to pay for it by living as property for a while. After that, she had slipped away again.


My opinion on Tenra Bansho Zero:
The system is nothing special, and is neither more "character-focused" nor faster than other games, really (the latter might change given players that know the system better). However, that's not where the strength of the system lies, IME.
The part about Karma and having a limit on it however, forces players to roleplay changes in the PCs' personalities constantly. And that's a good thing in my book. It works better both for creating drama, and for more naturally evolving changes in the characters.
Or rather, let me quote what Regina (forum name) just wrote on Facebook. Keep in mind, it was her first session ever, so she's as unbiased as they come!

Today's game was great. Allegedly began with a mission, but finally it changed my destiny and behaviour. Almost like in real life - you do not know how you can change and what goals you will have.

As I like to say, that's one of the greatest compliments a GM can receive (unless it's damning with faint praise - it might mean that the game wasn't focused enough. Let's hope that's not the case, especially since she had expressed interest in playing again).

Next Open RPG Day is planned for August. We might mean in the meantime as well, but we'll see.

1st Open RPG Day for 2013: Little Boy Lost (In Dark Alleys)

On 22.06.20013 we had an Open RPG Day (like Free RPG Day, except you don't get hardcopies of the quickstarts) in Sofia. Of course, I was one of the organizers (helping to round up other GMs) and ran a game of In Dark Alleys.
The idea is to have more Open RPG Days, too.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I assume you know the (free) adventure Little boy lost, as well.

So, I ran the game as presented. Only 4 players decided to join the horror game, so we played with those. The rest failed to show up in time.

They found the stuff in the boy's room, and while one of them liked the cold teddy bear, the chain positively creeped them out. The first channel was the valley of the dead souls, so they got the idea they should arm themselves when shades ran through them.

They got to see the Memory halls, and almost fought the Ego. The reason? "Behind closed doors, there's probably the things she hasn't seen yet!"

I think they actually got the idea of being wrong by meta-gaming, because I was cackling, much as I was trying to hide it.

The important part was, they found the memory of Mel watching the kid, and were able to see he was watching a particular channel. Then the group went ahead and passed without major incidents through everything but the Deserted city - didn't roll that one. They knew what they were looking for, though.

And then the group went on and found the idyllic landscape place. They went towards the music, brandishing knives, and one of them failed to resist the call. She put herself in the circle, while the rest of them had to deal with the toy-like monsters.

The psychology student got absorbed by a monster which was already mortally wounded. The rest of them killed another, but were shepharded towards sitting in the circle.

Meanwhile one of the monsters absorbed another. The boy was crying already.

Then one of the things went on and was trying to absorb the self-defence girl. As an answer, she stabbed it while it was saying "goo", stabbed it, then stabbed it again as an opposed attack, and managed to push it off herself.

A frantic fighting retreat ensued. Mel got eaten, as well, and not in the nice, sloppy way.

The managed to drop most of the other monsters, and fought them to a stand-still while they were trying to push themselves out of the TV. The programmer even ran back to grab the grey remote, which was dropped in the first fight. He came back successfully, and stabbed the last one in the back, while it was midway across the TV. It pulled back, and he jumped into the room. Then they managed to change the channel, and cut the last one across the middle.

"But Mel is still there!"

"No, she isn't, not any more."

"Oh..."

I even gave them some Minor Touched Abilities as "XP". Then the rest of them arrived late (I handled the pre-gens to the players who had lost a PC).

One of them found it funny and decided to explore more. They freed the monk, who told them whatever he had found.

Then they went to the Land of the Dead. And the new guy went in the wrong direction.

The bat-like monster swooped the newly-touched self-defence expert and dropped her, dead.

For some reason, he decided to keep going in the same direction. The same happened to him.

The others turned off the TV for good, put the boy to sleep, and told the mother Mel had an early period, which in her case was rather painful. "We took care of the boy and kept the house, miss, no problems!"

She bought it and they went away, knowing more about what is real and what isn't than before. They're now suitable to become 1st level characters, if I ever run the game.

/SPOILERS

All in all, the players enjoyed the game. All of them are coming for more RPGs on the 2nd Open RPG Day 2013 this week. Some are going to bring friends as well, so I call that a success.