Despite the (semi) failure of my Zombie game, I as usual keep gaming; recognizing that not everything goes the way I planned.
My other group of regular players met after a birthday party for the other GM's youngest son.
We spent most of the time hanging out and watching videos due to waiting for players to gather, get food, and so on. We finally began gaming in the late evening.
This time I wanted to run something I was working on system wise and settled on my "Action Card Engine" (ACE); the basic idea is that I wanted a fast moving card powered game reminiscint of Marvel and Dragonlance SAGA that TSR published shortly before before WOTC bought them out. (Or somewhere near that point.)
The Action Card Engine, is the result of that desire to create a card driven game engine, one that is flexible and fast--used specifically in this case for a mecha (giant robot) RPG. While I've only got a handful of notes on the rules, and maybe a dozen sketches for the primary setting, I still sat down and ran the game.
It was a smash hit, it seems when I do my own interests things tend to flow better and more freely.
The Vast Frontier setting is a bit unique for the giant robot genre, because rather than spaceplanes and samurai aspects, it is very much a gritty, dirty, and bloody "Old West" style setting. It shares many tropes with westerns--frontier exploration, law upheld at the end of the gun, dusty environments, trains (actually hyperspace cargo carryiing vehicle called "The Line"), and so on.
One of the things I've tried to establish in the setting is the buracratic and distant, often unconnected nature of the "law" presented through Corporations (giving a back east, they don't know what's going on out here, feel.) as well as the juxtaposition of technology versus the primative and rough nature of the worlds the game takes place on.
In our first playtest session as a group, our "cast", arrived off the shuttle from the nearest Line station, on the dusty and unnamed as of yet planet whose spaceport and primary town is New Jericho. They'd traveled here to seek out jobs bringing along their 'Slingers (Gunslinger, the mecha of the setting) since that is how they plan to do their job. Arriving they find the first person who applies for a job is made sherriff--just like that as random as can be, by the corporate edict sent down to the "Accounts, Recieving, and Dispensary" clerk in his walled up, bullet proof little office. They ignore the woman he sends off crying.
After each getting sorted into their sudden shock of new duties, they find themselves needing to intervene in the life of a young boy and his sister. The sister is due to be married to "a man with the bad end of a horse for a face..", as a way of settling her down. This was arranged by her uncle, the man who raised both the girl and her brother.
One player (nicknamed Preacher, for a good reason) and two new deputies go to see about this girl and see if they can work things out. Meanwhile the sherriff offers libations to the local Digitial reporter, who has a story to tell about the sherrif's predeccessor (in a wooden box, along with his 6 or so former deputies)
The reporters story comes with a few shots of Jack Daniels, about how the former sherrif took a scattergun to the back at point blank range, outside his 'slinger. They found him in two peices out on the ridge.
Elsewhere the preacher, and two deputies face down the girl, who is busily flinging the heaviest objects she can find at her uncle.
While getting the story from the uncle, she flees to her room and slams the door behind her. The two deputies then proceed to get more involved--one runs off to find the sherriff, the other deputy along with the preacher goto the door to talk to the fiery spirited 16 year old. Who has appearently picked up a hand cannon, as they hear the hammer pulled back--the preacher pipes up "I'm on the left" (when he was on the right) hoping he doesn't get shot. She splits the difference and misses both of them but blows a fist sized whole through the door.
The preacher and deputy draw their own weapons and try and talk her down. Eventually the preacher's silver tongue wags long enough to convince her that she won't have to marry the man that her uncle arranged for her, and instead will be sent to school with the Preacher's sister. ( despite his "baptist" style playing of the preacher, his sister went off to a nunnery "She went to a nunnery and turned it into a warzone.." says he.) Appearently sending the girl off to his sister is his idea of revenge--on the girl or his sister, I don't know yet.
Things proceeded along at a pace. The girl is sent off, things are going smooth, when 'slinger fire gets their attention. It seems a squad of farm 'slinger with handmade weapons were threatening the accounts office.
The cast suit up in their 'slinger, then ask over the radio (staticky, and bad reception) for the farmers to lay down their weapons and surrender. They get shot at for their trouble. Returning fire they blow a huge hole in one slinger and set it ablaze forcing the farm-boy to eject. Then another one (the eldest brother Jed) takes a lethal hit that blows through the mecha, the pilot and out the back side of the slinger. Due to a high card played by one of the deputies.
More talking ensues and the other boys (without their eldest, Jed) surrender. One deputy goes of to find their "mama", who is indirectly why the boys were trying to "rob" the accounts office.
The crying woman from before? That's her. She was trying to get back benefits for her now dead husband owed for going on three years to stave off losing their farm. Now her eldest son is dead. Angry, frustrated tears were why she was crying earlier.
When she arrives it is revealed the boys were more afraid of HER, than of the sherriff and his deputies. She will be a re-occuring characte, I imagine...:D
That's a short debrief on the game. Was fun, and I know what I need to work on for the system.
General Notes:
Gunslingers and Farm slingers all come from the same slang root--"Lineslingers" the smallish mecha units used to maintain the Line, in transit. Most suits in general use are decommissioned from the Line, and sold in secondary markets where a little retrofitting and they make good tools for farmers, miners, outlaws and so on.
In the setting a slinger is part horse and part gun in terms of "use", The typical slinger is 4 meters tall, and weighs a couple of tons. They're small by mecha standards. Most of them use weapons modified from tools of the trades they're employed in--riveters turned to guns for example.
The 'slingers also "dress" up, as well--wearing hats, scarves, vests, longcoats. Part of the reasoning behind this is it looks cool to have giant robots in western wear style attire. The other part is its cheaper to buy a 100 buck hat than to spent days retuning the optics of the mecha to deal with glare of a new planet. It's cheaper to buy a long coat than maintaining a exorbantly expensive cooling system for the entire unit, or to seal it against dust in its works. Yet, it does look cool..(Pardon the bad art...its just a concept peice.)
Tags: Good Gaming Playtest
