Long Week
Zzzzip! That week disappeared in a flash, though it felt more like a flash burn while it was under way.
Little that was dramatic, mainly fatique colliding with workload and various other stresses.
At least by the end of the week I was essentially caught up on bills for the month - some weeks ahead of time - and finally got the van inspection (and prerequisite repairs) out of the way to the tune of $524 and change -- better than I'd feared, so I actually took that cheerfully.
A busy weekend ahead, but I'm enjoying it and looking forward to the bulk of it.
A week from this Saturday another get-together with a clix match as at least part of it is planned at Crypt Leak & Abbygal's place, with Eric G. planning to make it this time, too, very interested in giving it a try.
I'm assembling additional teams and selectively revamping ones I made up last time to give everyone some fun options to choose from. The Defenders team's already been modifed in one important respect - bringing the Hulk up to speed as best I can do with the clix and Feat selections.
Coming up with At A Glance aids for each player - specific to his selected team - is also something I've been doing here and there.
Along with that I'm looking at making up special tokens for a scenario to get us more quickly out onto the map and not make the sole objective looking for the best targets to beat on.
At the moment, though, I'm toast. I'll make no attempt to catch up on even summary comments on this week's news. Settling in to read a little before drifting off to sleep is the next order of business, especially as I'm intending to get up and start my Saturday early.
And so... I'm off.
Comments
As you do with fund-eating cars. Glad it's behind you. Wish it had gone with far less of your money as it did.
Sounds like you are (what a surprise) going all out to make things simple for your ingenues. I know someone likely to be jealous of having eager players. Sounds like you have some fun ahead, though and I'm pleased to hear it.
Anyway, I had an idea for a scenario where word would have leaked out into the superhero community that there was going to be this big invitation-only underworld auction. Naturally, this would occasion interest on the part of uninvited parties, like superheroes and other supervillains.
I figure I'd get it all set up -- points, overall structure, like that -- and then, maybe 30 or 60 days beforehand, I'd let the players start emailing me and setting up their teams. I'd allot characters on a first come, first served basis, and allow people to, basically, pick a character or two at a time, and use them to try and get more information. For example, if someone wanted to, they could say "Okay, I want to put Batman on my team, and right now, he's going to be using his detective skills and street level contacts to try and get more information about this thing".
I'd roll some dice on my end, or something, and possibly feed back to that player a few more careful snippets of rumor or hunches, or even inside dope. And we'd go from there.
I'd want to set it up so people would be using characters on their teams that could logically be involved in such a scenario -- street level superheroes and or supervillains, in other words. And I'd want teams to be sensible -- if you're putting Daredevil and Spider-Man on your team, that's fine, but in that case you can't have, say, Madrox the Multiple Man, or the Rhino.
As I don't want to eliminate vast swaths of potential team members, though, I'd have to set the scenario on that same dopey planet where all the DC-Marvel team up stories took place. Which bothers me, but, well, I understand the need. Some people like chocolate, some vanilla.
My major problem is in trying to concoct surprises for the auction itself. I need to reserve certain figs, and I guess the best thing I can do is hope no one wants to put one of those figs on their team. Otherwise, I either have to say 'sure' and change my plans, or I have to say 'no, you can't use that fig and I can't tell you why', which at least tips some of my hand.
Well, it's pointless to worry about it this far out. I guess I'm just really missing being able to DM scenarios. Or play clix at all.
Hope you guys all had fun, though.
SF: I kept pretty busy Saturday - I was up before 6am - but it was still at a relaxing pace.Odds and ends and domestic bits mostly.
Between 8:30 and just before 10 that night I was out on the lawn with the cats, taking advantage of the excellent weather and clear skies to watch the Perseid meteor shower. Not a high incidence of meteors, but a fair handful of very visible streaks. It was pleasant to just spend the time looking at the constellations, too, trying to discern some of the spectral classes of stars (looking for some blue here or red there) and marveling at how optically clear the air was. Watching the criss-cross of plane and jet traffic very much reminded me that we exist at the bottom of a vast sea that's trmendously thick compared to the vacuum surrounding us.
Having the van officially up to snuff and stamped Approved by state authorities was liberating, so while I'd like to not have the extra debt I'm happy that much is over with for now.
I did do some more theoretical team building part of Saturday and a little on Sunday, so I'm hoping to have some easy-fitting choices for the players come the 19th.
I'll reply to H's in a separate comment as I steal bits of time here and there on a busy Monday.
Aside from that, though, agreeing before hand that all details are to be kept quiet and that a "no" could mean anything from another player's already called dibs to you have certain designs for a character or you've determined that that character won't fit some aspect of the scenario -- that should be enough to allow you to keep control. One person's "street level" isn't going to be another's, and under a structure such as you're proposing players would simply have to default to the DM. I'd likely be inclined to submit a team for approval all at once, once I knew what the build was set at, and then make adjustments from there.
I'd keep the other elements in the long lead time to a minimum, though. (eg the clues and and action happening prior to the game itself.) Although I'd like to play them in character I don't know that I'm going to want to really roleplay them - giving them lines and such -- that would be more a function of my mood at the time than anything else. I'm also afraid that if you start to take it down a roleplaying path it's going to create some problems as players, being able to look over the map and see where other characters are, will tend to operate their characters in a way other than what those characters would do on their own. I don't know how willing I'm going to be to pretend that I don't know that Daredevil and Spider-man (being played by another character) are already in the building, for instance. Sure, I know that you have special rules for Stealth, for instance, that prevents someone from attacking them under most cicumstances, but I wouldn't for a moment promise now that I'm going to be willing to pretend I don't know that walking in that direction is putting my piece in danger, and so either avoid it or have a suitable teammate provide some protection for me.
As for what we have planned up here, that's set for the 19th, so I still have roughly five days to go.
I've been casually pulling together some more teams - a Masters of Evil, Alpha Flight, a mix of (real and potential) Femme Fatales that will require the presumption that Morgan Le Fay has the heroines sorcerously convinced that they're all on the same team, and a few other odd theme teams to add to the ones I already had in place. I'm likely to take a second or eevn third pass at the MOE, as a decision such as whether or not to go with a traditional one or work in an experienced or veteran Kang makes a huge difference in the number of characters on the team. I'm interested in trying out their recently-changed TA, though, where they get to act three turns in a row if they choose. Shellhead is, understandably, the most commonly-applied Feat card for members of that team now.
Scant work's been done on the Objects of Power simple scenario, but I'm closer than I was. I at least want the option of some easy-to-grasp and -implement scenario that will give us some other objective than immediately selecting who to start blasting or wailing on. Rather than make up fancy pogs I suspect I'm going to put small, colored dots on the face of existing object tokens, with one color representing objects of power/things to be brought back to one's starting area and another being traps. In the case of a trap a single D6 will be rolled to see which trap it is. The reason for all this is that I don't want to try to create entire item/object pogs that are indistinguishable from the existing ones. I want to minimize anyone's ability to discern a standard object (I still want those in there) from the special ones while they're flipped face down. Also, I'm trying not to force art projects on myself during a busy week. Keep It Simple will be my guiding rule.
I'm sure I'll report on what was and wasn't done in a post mortem post next week.
A word of reassurance -- there would be no roleplaying in any scenario I came up with. I'd simply give people the option of emailing me prior to the scenario with interesting, 'in character' investigative approaches to getting more information than I would make available in the 'general notes'. By which I mean, I would deliberately leave what I'd told folks before hand very vague, and if you want to find out more -- who might be invited to the auction (so, who you might expect to be there) and what specifically might be being auctioned off, you'd need to find a way, in character, to ask me. Something like:
"Okay, I'm putting the Vet Captain America on my team, if possible. Now, I have Cap use his contacts with SHIELD and the Avengers to try and find out a little more about this auction." If you want to make it more specific -- "Cap pulls SHIELD reports on thefts and disappearances for the last year, to see if there's anything that might be pertinent" or "Cap goes to talk to Nick Fury and see what he may know" then I'd factor that in to my response.
A player might add Dr. Strange or Dr. Fate to their team to take a more mystic approach, assuming I'd allow it (I would, for example, if they were running a Defenders team, or a JSA team; otherwise, I'd disallow it, as neither is 'street level').
But once everyone is in the basement ready to play, it will be a straight up clix game, with the only difference being, it won't just be for victory points... there will be an alternate way to win, i.e., recovering the auctioned item for your own team and getting it off the map. Something like that. (On the other hand, if your team just wants to run around beating hell out of everything else that moves on the map, have at it; victory points would also be awarded.)
The 'underworld auction' idea is just one I have; I also have a world ending cataclysm concept that would benefit from some prior investigation, too. But, again, no roleplaying would be necessary once the game actually began, just, you know, moving the clix around on the map and dealing with the other figures there.
Yeah, that's an excellent point you made -- individual players won't know if I'm disallowing, say, Bullseye because Bullseye's in the warehouse, or because another player has Bullseye on his team. So that's okay.
I'm not sure one player dropping out would be a killer, if we had three potential players and one GM (me). If we only had two, yeah, well, the scenario would go out the window, and I guess it would just be me playing against whoever showed up. But I could deal with that, and for that matter, I could probably still set up the scenario to run by itself, without a DM. (Or you and I/Tony and I could take turns running the NPCs.)
Whatever the case, as I keep saying, it's pointless to worry about it now. I just enjoy designing scenarios. Pity I can't get paid for it.
Thanks for the clarifications. My central concern was the thought that you might set up something elaborate only to have it vulnerable to the vagaries of one or more other people.
I like the idea of possibly finding one's self starting the game with one or two of one's team possibly already inside - closer to the action but obviously at more immediate risk of discovery before they can act and call in the rest of their team.
Like building teams, I understand how coming up with scenarios can be a fun activity unto itself.
Mostly, I was thinking the 'gradual team building' thing could work out as follows -- I send out the general outlines of the scenario, including build totals and character prerequisites. Each person can then build their whole team and submit it to me (which has the advantage of perhaps staking out a certain character or characters first) or simply announcing the recruitment of one or two, who would then 'investigate' and try to get more information.
This last would allow one to 'tailor' one's team to what one finds out about the details of the auction... if there are a lot of stealthy characters inside, you may want at least one Ultimate or Superman Ally on your team, or an Avenger with the Thunderbolts TA, etc (I'm sure there are many other ways advance knowledge would let one prepare one's team, I just can't think of any off the top of my head).
Anyway, I'd want to offer people the option, and yeah, certainly, actually having the opportunity to have someone already inside the building where the auction is taking place when the scenario starts should be part of the mix.