Tag / pendragon

by guyeatsfood

A Change Is As Good As A Rest – Reflections on 7 Hills 2023

Last weekend I was at 7 Hills, the TTRPG convention I co-run. It was, from my point of view anyway, excellent. Before the event both myself and Jag (my fellow organiser) had I think been musing over whether it was worthwhile continuing, and separately had decided that unless it was a “Hell, Yeah” we might need to lay the con down. It was emphatically a Hell Yeah from both of us, and we’ll be returning in 2024. In fact, we’re even looking at a Virtual Seven Hills in 2023 – all details on the website above.

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7 Hills is themed, with all games loosely (sometimes very loosely) linked to the theme, and this year’s was Change – which seemed to be suitably flexible to provide an inspiration push without holding GMs back. It’s also, like all conventions based in the Garrison Hotel, all about games – there isn’t anything to do apart from play games, and that’s by design. Each slot, everyone is playing – we have the odd trader (All Rolled Up were there this year, and we’re looking at some longer-term links with them too) but the main focus is, as it should be, play.

The first thing to reflect on is that running 2 games as well as organising the con is probably one too many. Or at least, I could have run 2 games using the same system – that would have made it more manageable. I went into the con with the least prep for my two games I’ve done for a while – and although they went well (more on that later) it wasn’t my best work. I’ll try to run both of them again, and post them on here, but they definitely need some fleshing out. So, here’s some things I learned from games run and played – a mixture of reflections and reviews

Urban Jungle is a Solid System

It’s an unusual setting, to be sure – anthropomorphic noir, where animals run around doing gangster stuff in a range of easily-recognisable American city parallels (I went for New Orleans-inspired Bellegarde for my game).The system does a clever trick of making non-combat characters effective, and the whole thing felt suitably dark and moody. As with everything, putting animals in makes it accessible – nobody worried about how to engage with noir or if their characters were doing the right thing in genre – hat tip to my player with the moody lion accountant!

I’ll be running this out at conventions in the future too, and if you want to see more of the system in action, check out Round About Midnight, a ready-made adventure for it from when I ran it before.

Soulbound is a Really Solid System

I’ve blogged before about Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, the high fantasy superhero opposite to WFRP, and I ran it again at Seven Hills with a self-penned adventure – and it really pops. A simple 3 fight structure, an investigation montage borrowed from 13th Age, and a straightforward plot made this a fun one-shot, and it’s certainly a game I’ll come back to again and again.

Ironsworn: Starforged Has More Potential Than I Thought

I’m a big fan of Shawn Tompkin’s Ironsworn, and although I backed Starforged, there seemed to be too much of it going on for me to wrap my head properly around it. It’s a solo-ish system that also allows for group collaborative or guided (with a GM) play, and its sandbox oracle creation stuff really sang in the game that we played. I need to get back to both Ironsworn and this game and give it a proper run out – there’s some balancing I need to get my head around about progress tracks, but I think I need to just suck it and see what happens. Either way, a nice game that fits into the “narratively crunchy” end just where I like it.

PBTA Games Need Tighter Sandboxing

I played Root (really excellent system, and, yes, more animals) – I really liked the gameplay, but some of the structure of the one-shot left me puzzled. In Root the default structure is that you come to a Clearing (the woodland settlements of the game) and encounter a number of multi-layered conflicts, which you can then interact with in a few different ways to resolve. Each Clearing has 3 or more conflicts, and multiple ways to interact with them. While this made for open, free-styling play, I’d have preferred a tighter sandbox for the one-shot. In our game, we went off in about three different directions, and met (or heard about) a wide array of NPCs that led to a bit of analysis paralysis from us. 

This wasn’t a fault of the GM, who was great at bringing action and building to a climax (and when we forced it to kick off a bit, ran with the punches well) – but a tweak to the structure would have helped, maybe by reducing the number of NPCs or the complexities of the Clearing’s conflicts, or starting with more of an implied focus on one of the conflicts. 

Ways to do this? Well, I’m a fan of Agon’s islands approach of “Do you do this, or this, or something else?” – and also the Apocalypse World one-shot starter of “You’re tied to a chair – who did this to you?”. Either way, starting with a bit more direct peril would have helped to get us on the same page from the start.

Pendragon Remains A Classic

I’ve yet to run Pendragon, somehow, at conventions, but have played more and more of it recently. It’s just a very easy game to get solid one-shot play out of – all the PCs have a means to adventure together and a clear mission, there’s lots of roleplaying juices to flow with your squires and the various other knights you find, and combat is brutal and swingy enough to have genuine peril in it. Our game ended in a near-TPK (with the survivors joining the evil fae spirits) and it was all genuine great fun. I need to get this to the table soon.

So, a successful convention – and if you’re up for Seven Hills 2024, or even Virtual Seven Hills, let me know and check out the website.

by guyeatsfood

Review: Fate Worlds – Camelot Trigger

Questing knights fight a posthuman AI threat across the solar system in this Fate World that sets gonzo to Flash-Gordonesque and gives a great mixture of options at a carefully curated level of complexity. Detailed exploration of the Arthurian legends this is not – think of changing the names to be more sci-fi (or more Paranoia – you’ll see) and adding in giant armour. This Fate World came out pretty early and is, I think, only available in the Volume Two: Worlds in Shadow anthology, and I’m kicking myself I didn’t give it a proper read through earlier.

The Fluff – Arthurian Knights… in spaaaaace!

When insane AI MerGN-A attacked Earth, humanity was scattered and defeated until John Arthur found MerLN, another AI, and worked together to turn the tide of conflict. Now Arthur, Valerie Le Guin, and (wait for it) L4-NC3-L07 lead brave knights in giant mecha suits crossing the solar system trying to fight the remnants of MerGN-A’s hidden base and defeat her remaining Exurgent armies. As I said, Pendragon in mecha this is not.

There’s lots to do, all described in enough detail to get you there and going – Mars is a manufactory dedicated to war machines, with arenas where hopeful knights can battle it out, the Asteroid belt is home to brigands and Edge Knights who have been cast out – maybe because of chivalrous misdeeds – and Saturn is wealthy and successful but refuses to acknowledge Arthur’s claim to the throne. Each planet gets a paragraph of description, and each has lots of plot hooks – there’s a reason why adventurous knights would go to each one, and what problems they could find there.

It’s a great setting, if it could just get past those clunky names. L4-NC3-L07, apparently, has kept the alphanumeric name he had as a slave in honour of all those beaten down, and… well, it’s my one problem with the setting. How do you say it? I’m guessing like “Lancelot.” So why not call him Lancelot? What’s wrong with the AIs being called Morgana and Merlin? It’s not like the original IP is in copyright. Other conceits – like Knights usually inheriting their Armour, and so keeping heraldic designations on them – feel like they fit the setting, but the names just grate for me.

The Crunch – Giant Mecha Combat Rules!

There’s an allure now about new FATE supplements as the rules have evolved to cover lots of different scenarios, whether it’s steampunk combat that actually gives great rules for Age of Sail ship battles, or trapped-in-a-flooding-room traps that emulate the best pulp scenarios, and it’s wise to remember that Camelot Trigger came out relatively early in FATE’s lifetime. Nevertheless, the mecha rules are refreshingly smooth, giving just enough complexity without adding too much handling time.

Your Armour has systems (normally 5, one in each body location) that can have either skills – which replace the pilot’s skill if it is less – or stunts, which function just like stunts in regular FATE. You use your pilot’s stress tracks, but can shut down systems on your Armour like Consequences to avoid them. You might be accompanied by air support, in which case you’ll get some extra stress boxes – it’s all very streamlined and simple, and actually makes me want to see it in action. There’s a very sensible discussion on scale where humans are fighting Armour – that it should be resolved as a contest and not as a combat encounter, and a reminder that chivalry means this is unlikely to happen in an open battle. There’s a whole pack of sample Armours, as well, which neatly show off how the design system works, and rules for tweaking it to allow transforming mecha and combination mecha.

The One-Shot – Knights or Lords?

This game would work great as a one-shot – the setting is complex and weird while still having enough classic tropes to get players on board quickly. There’s loads to do and I can easily see a range of missions for a group of questing knights. But the game also includes write-ups for Arthur, Valerie (the Guinevere analogue), L4-NC3-L07, and MerLN – and I can see a great one-shot where 4 players each play one of these big movers and shakers in the setting dealing with MorGN-A’s return. It’s rare that I read a setting and want to jump in so immediately – again, I’m disappointed this has been sat on my bookshelf unplayed for so long!