Games Night Catch-Up (Part 2)

How did we get to be planning a smuggling operation that takes place during a charity DJing gig? This will see the three of us jump out of a plane - while one of us spins his decks - all so that we can hopefully hide in plain sight the fact that we are smuggling anything at all.

The previous plan was looking like it was going to involve a lot of really crazy legwork and sneakiness - either persuade someone else to act as a mule, or else sneak the materials on to an official who wouldn't be likely to be searched at customs, and then steal them back from them after they have got back in to Liverpool. And all of this while we are possibly under surveillance for previous "crimes". Yikes.

It dawned on us though that all of our plans had been based on the idea that we would be moving the goods by ship. What if they flew? What if it was a private plane, a little less likely to be searched to begin with, but then there was still the matter of getting it past customs at the other end... Then it hit: what if we were to parachute the contraband out of the plane?

And then it really hit: D's character, the East German Rockerboy DJ extraordinaire has been at the heart of every plan that we've made which has gone at least a little well. WHAT IF: Gustav smuggled the goods whilst DJing, jumping out of a plane, DJing in freefall and then after his parachute has opened?

It will take preparation: but really, what was wrong with the plan? How could it possibly go wrong?

I'm sure we'll find out over the coming weeks... More on this after this Thursday's games night!

Games Night Catch-Up (Part 1)

The four of us in our gaming group, including the GM, have lots of things going on lately. This has meant that it has been difficult to keep Tuesday as our night. Take tonight for instance: switched to Thursday.

The good thing is that this gives me the chance to catch up on what we've actually been doing in our Cyberpunk game.

There are several big plot threads running through what we have been trying to accomplish. One is the fact that P's main character owes the company that he works for 20,000 euros: and they've given him a deadline to pay up or else. So we're aiming for several big scores to try and give him the chance to raise the cash.

One of these big scores has sort of paid off: we successfully pulled off an abduction of someone connected with a group that our mysterious overseers wanted investigating. It involved quite a bit of planning, and there is nothing that directly ties P and D's characters to the abduction apart from circumstance. My character, Davey Smith, the Fixer, was the person who actually abducted the person, after staging a car-jacking. The police have called on P and D, but not on me. And we keep rolling Awareness but coming up empty. Are we being followed or are we being paranoid? Are the two mutually exclusive?

D's character, a Rockerboy, actually has a good career. We joke quite a lot about maybe just role-playing being hangers-on and helpers for D's day-job, but actually it would probably be much less risky and much more profitable.

Nearly every plan we come up with lately somehow centres around D's character, a charismatic East German House DJ who is on the rise (and yet somehow finds the time to work these schemes with us). Previously, D was DJing a big club night, which gave us the excuse to invite this person that we abducted. Now we are planning perhaps the most audacious scheme ever: smuggling contraband from the Isle of Man to Liverpool by means of a charity gig that will see the three of us board a plane and skydive into Liverpool, all the while having the contraband secreted about our persons.

Hiding in plain sight, the three of us having never jumped out of a plane ever: what could go wrong?

More on this later, and how we came to this most incredible and so-crazy-it-can't-fail scheme...

Misc, January 26th 2012

OU module: have been and had a quick look around the micro-site for my latest module. As the module is finishing this year they have decided not to update the aesthetics and navigation; a pop-up appeared to tell me that the site was designed for IE5 or later, and that my browser might not be able to see everything. Considering I am running Firefox 9 this seems to be a curious oversight on the part of the site maintainers.

Wedding: a friend of mine is getting married this weekend! Which is really nice, and so I am trying to make sure that I don't forget my camera. I'll remember everything else. The camera, I will forget. Or I will forget to charge the battery. (excuse me a moment...)

Reading: I'm reading a short story/novella by Adam Roberts on my Kindle called Anticopernicus, which is pretty good. I'm plowing my way through Getting Things Done by David Allen (something I have meant to do for a long time but have only just got around to). Already this is starting to blow my mind. In conjunction with another book that I bought recently for the Kindle called Discardia this could be just the wake-up call I need to get things on track and productive.

(and I just had an Amazon delivery in the last two minutes of two books that I ordered with my birthday vouchers: the final Joe Pitt novel and A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster! Things to look forward to)

Finally: I've been noodling around with numbers about dice rolling ever since I mentioned it the other day. And there is the beginnings of a tickle of an ideas. At least for starting to get a regular kind of expression for probability distribution with an AdN kind of situation (where you have a certain number of same-sided fair dice). Give me time...

Games Night review

Last night's Cyberpunk game session was good; my GM was amenable to me switching in my Fixer, who in some ways is a bit more capable for the scenarios that are unfolding. We have three ongoing conflicts that need resolving.

Firstly, we have been asked to "provide" a person from a certain organisation to P's character's corporate masters. We have had some dealings with other shady individuals related to this, and some limited successes against to them. The extraction plan for this is alright, but perhaps there are things that we could do that would make success more guaranteed.

(incidentally, we have a strong motivation at the moment as P's character has incurred some sizeable debts at the expense of his corporate masters; some of those debts can be laid at the feet of mine and D's characters, some can not)

Secondly, we've been asked to assassinate someone on behalf of their rivals. However, the assassination/disappearance poses huge risks. We have also discovered some materials that could be used to blackmail the rivals in some way. Is this a better way to make some much-needed money?

Finally, we have been asked to smuggle some contraband across the Irish Sea and into Soviet Liverpool. Huge risks, but a big pay-off. The plan so far is going to get us killed, I'm sure of it. If we smuggle it ourselves we take enormous risks. If we get someone else to smuggle it our risks are lessened, but we lose control. The plan at the moment is to have someone unknowingly smuggle it (a Party official whose car would not be searched anyway) and then steal the contraband back. Hugely risky.

What to do, what to do?

Last night was a lot of fun because we did lots of planning and brainstorming, lots of researching too. Previous weeks, which have involved violence and sneaky legwork have been good, but for most of yesterday we were throwing ideas around to try and come up with good plans of action. Roll on next week!

Games Night

So tonight is games night! We are currently playing a hacked Cyberpunk 2020; the setting is a parallel 2011, a Soviet Liverpool of Russian corporations, cyborgs and dirty dealings.

I am thinking about switching in a different character; I've contacted my GM (who was also the best man at my wedding) to see what he thinks. My current character is a kind of take on a Nomad. His "Family" is a digital one, in some respects he is more of a private investigator/freelance spy than anything else. I tend to call his "Family" skill "Network" or something similar. It then becomes more of a skill based on what his "Network" can offer or provide.

I'm not sure entirely how successful he has been in terms of his character class - given that, actually, I've not defined "Network" very well - but he has been pretty good at getting himself into and out of sticky situations. Given that the other two players' characters have all been knocked out of play (no-one has died but several have been benched in-game for a couple of weeks), it seems like it might be good to switch out Simon Anderson, freelancer, and switch in, Davey Smith, fixer.

Oh, and another thing: I need to get a 12mm handcannon like my fellow players have kitted their characters out with! I haven't thought much about weaponry in-game, tending to hope that I won't need more than a simple pistol. After all, how crazy would it be to see people running around a city with huge automatic weapons? But this 12mm pistol does 4d6+1 damage!! You only need 8 points of clear damage in a single attack to completely mess-up a body area, and for an NPC/enemy that is usually a knockout.

Anyways, just some thoughts ahead of the weekly game. Come back tomorrow (if you're interested) for what happened!

Dog Days

I have recently got into tabletop roleplaying games. I have read about the hobby for years and years, but never known how to break into it. Last autumn a friend suggested that I come along to a game that a mutual friend was going to GM and see what I thought.

After three hours of play my thoughts were mostly, "Wow."

We were playing Apocalypse World, a game by D. Vincent Baker, and there was a lot about the game that I really liked (I have written some blog posts about it before, here, here and here; I'm sure I will write some more on this blog as well). Recently our group has shifted games to an alternate present setting that is being run with Cyberpunk 2020 rules, which has been hugely entertaining - the mechanics of play are quite different, the setting is light years away from Apocalypse World, and our party has an unfortunate tendency to get severely injured (although not my character, I am happy to say!).

Over the last few weeks I have been reading through the mechanics and setting for another game by D. Vincent Baker, Dogs in the Vineyard. Again, vastly different to both games I've mentioned so far, but keeping the real streak of relationships and consequences of both games that our group have played recently.

I've never GMed a game before, but with some more re-reading and assimilation of the core of Dogs, I think I'm going to put myself forward to GM a campaign later in the year. The setting just calls out to me: gun-slinging missionaries whose word is law; travelling from town to town to keep the peace, calling the Faithful and casting out demons. Really, what's not to like? There are lots of dice used, but the emphasis with them is the random nature of the dice supporting the storytelling; it's really about a great unfolding collaborative narrative that is stitched together by the GM and the players (rather like the distinctive coats that the game's Dogs wear).

So anyway: I expect that over the coming months I'll be posting up some notes on here, as and when I get some ideas in place - although there won't be spoilers for the players who will be taking part!