In the lair of the White Bear

A chance encounter

A studious White Bear

I first met the White Bear last summer, in the guise of her secret identity (who shall remain nameless, naturally enough). For the purposes of this article though, I can tell you that the White Bear hails from Copenhagen, which is why, on my asking what had brought her to Glasgow, she told me that she was working on an art project funded by Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). Intrigued but wary- because of my philistine tendencies when it comes to modern art, I soon warmed to the White Bear’s theme when she explained to me that it had been inspired by a quotation from Fyodor Dostoyevsky (who regular readers will remember is my favourite writer from the pantheon of 19th century Great Russians):

“Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute"
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 1863
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Listening to the White Bear explain how she had escaped from inside the head in which she had been trapped by Dostoyevsky’s thought-experiment; and how she was now travelling around the world to “examine the ideas and consequences of the dichotomy [between] inner beast and shallow surface, and [to] investigate the profound impact [that] the idea of a true inside and a merely representative exterior has on all kinds of fields”, I found any lingering prejudices melting away.

Web 2.0 and tabletop roleplaying #1: the past

A big day for all concerned?
World-historical anniversaries are all very well but today also happens to see my 400th post here @RD/KA!, so I've been racking my brains trying to think of a topic suitable to highlight this latest small landmark in my bloggery. What could be more apt I decided, than a subject which has its roots in my halcyon days- the 1980's; about which I wrote right back when this blog was but a stripling; which represents furthermore one of my major unfulfilled aspirations as a roleplayer?

Phase 1: "When ah were a lad..."
My fascination with what Web 2.0 can offer tabletop roleplayers is rooted in experiences predating the invention of the World Wide Web itself. It all began, naturally enough, with Katana: Sword Against Evil™, that renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him.
(Graphic via Trends in the Living Networks)

A definite hankering...

It's been a long time since I did any roleplaying, and longer still since I've GM'ed. There are various reasons for this, but they all boil down to two in the end: dissatisfaction and weariness.

My WFRP campaign ran for about 30 sessions over a period of some 16 months, ie. roughly every other week on average. I wasn't a seasoned GM, and I'm not really the seat of the pants type either, which meant that I put a lot of work into those games, not including the write ups here at RD/KA! (Keynote was a godsend!). In the end it was all too much for me. I was worn out.

What was more, I wasn't getting the satisfaction I wanted from the game. As I explained to the lads one night while we were eating dinner before a game with Bill: playing boardgames with Badger is a simple matter of opening the box and off we go; a 100% successful recipie for enjoyment, which couldn't be said of the roleplaying, even when it was going well; which wasn't all the time, naturally enough. This was my motivation to turn the Sunday sessions into a regular boardgaming bash.

Even when Bill became the GM, the group dynamic changed because the midweek date ultimately reduced us to just 2 PCs: Tony and me. I think this just wasn't enough to give the games real momentum. Quite why the 3 of us failed to reach critical mass escapes me, although I do know of some contributory factors. I now believe that primary among them was Katana.

Readers who've known me since bygone days might be shocked by that admission, since they'll be all too aware that Katana is one of my all-time favourite PC's, so close to my heart that I coined the phrase 'primary projection' to express what he meant to me. That is to say: he was a creative expression of some of the deepest wellsprings of my subconscious strivings. Well known primary projections include Conan and Philip Marlowe.

At first sight you'd think that I'd've been delighted to return to a PC like that; in the hands of the GM who presided over his creation and the first phase of his adventures; and with the player - Tony, natch - who, as GM, gave Katana the second phase of his adventures, when we first roleplayed together back in the late 1990's. And I was. It's a nice experience to pick up an old PC and 'put him on' like you would a well worn coat. And that blog I wrote upon his return weighed heavily in the balance which eventually tipped in favour of my acceptance that rpg's are art.

Even so, with the benefit of hindsight after the roleplaying had unravelled, Bill mused that going back to Katana might've been a futile attempt to relive old glories. He was right, of course. Precisely because Katana is that primary projection, he is too deeply embedded in pasts that can't be revisited. Sure Bill and I could do Katana easily and well, but it was, as Bill said about Frank Miller's Sin City, a five-finger exercise.

Worse still, with the benefit of lengthy reflection on Bill's offhand remark, I have come to the conclusion that not only was Katana too easy to play for the pair of us; he was also an unfair obstacle we unwittingly threw in Tony's path. I mean to say, teaming up Tony's Witchblade with Katana effectively reduced her to a guest star in Katana's continuity, instead of being a co-star in her own. This is OK for one-offs or short mini-campaigns based on player transience, but not if you want a proper ongoing series. Each and every player should enjoy equal billing after all.

All of this is by way of looking back at some of the mistakes made in past roleplaying in the hopes of avoiding them in the future because, yes, we're talking about doing some roleplaying. In the end Donald's wish to roleplay again was just too keen to ignore.

I'd already suggested to Donald that he try the HERO system, and was pleased he was agreeable. On that basis, Donald is talking about a couple of ideas. It's likely that we'll begin with his first: an outlaw mini-campaign using Iron Crown Enterprise's highly esteemed 1987 Robin Hood: The Role Playing Campaign. I am already looking forward to this. I'm thinking of a character who is a master of the quarterstaff. Whatever complaints people might have about HERO, it cannot be gainsaid that its skills list and combat system renders weapon mastery in rich detail, and with mechanics that reward real tactics and actual practice as opposed to just dishing out stat upgrades.

For my part, I have two ideas for mini-campaigns of my own. One is HERO too: a return to my take on TSR's 1993 Bughunters. One of two books I've got from the late, unlamented Amazing Engine system, I liked Bughunters' concept: clone troopers in space fighting the bugs? What's not to like? I immediately realised though that I would run this game with HERO instead of the dumbass TSR AE.

I ran this with Tony and other friends back in the late 1990's. I've still got all the material I worked up for the game and the setting (a piece of background work was posted to the Trollslayer forums a few years ago). It just needs to be updated, and I'd be ready to run it again. This is something I'd like to do, because I liked the kinds of stories I was aiming at in the setting; and I had a few surprises in store for my shell-shocked players. Unfortunately we moved on to other games, and never went back to my Bughunter.

My other idea is to go back to WFRP, naturally enough. I'd like to run a more hi-octane game in a classic D&D style, albeit with a bit more than just dungeon bashing; a game in which I'd unleash without let or hindrance the full power of the game's hideous antagonists and its deadly combat system. Of course, I plan on making the potential rewards commensurate with the risk.

We still don't know quite how, when and with whom our return to roleplaying is going to pan out, but we'll be getting something going for sure. Expect to hear more. ;)

Meanwhile...

Not got time for a full entry, so just a quick update.

Got game!
Ros and I continued our Carcassonne contest last night. Ros won 2-1 on the night, sneaking her session-winning victory in the last few plays.

Carcassonne matches
3½-3½
Gah!

Blades: Too Many Katanas #1
Katana and Wychblayde got up to their antics again last Wednesday. The scenario involved confronting a bunch of Katana clones in the service of Katana's evil former masters. It can only get weirder.

More soon. ;)

The Children of Atlantis #2

First to Cairo...
Last week's first issue of this new Katana/Wychblayde teamup had ended with our 2 heroes having discovered who, what, where and why:

• Who- the Children of Atlantis.
• What- the fragments of the Great Seal of Lemuria.
• Where- the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo and the Guggenheim in New York.
• Why- raising sunken cities and awakening Elder Gods.

It didn't take us long to figure out that Cairo, being closer, should be our first destination. It took us a bit longer to realise that Katana's sword and Wychblayde's polearm would make regular air travel impossible. Some time was spent considering calling on the help of one of Katana's contacts, but I felt that it was inappropriate to make this call for the sake of a taxi-service. With a little prompting from Bill we soon hit on the plan of stowing away in the hold of a plane. This proved easy to do, and we were soon in the dry heat of Cairo.

A talkative 'tourist-friendly' cabbie and a minor diversion later, Katana and Wychblayde snuck into the Museum of Antiquities in the dead of night to locate the fragment of the Great Seal to save it from the Children of Atlantis. As Katana snuck through the darkened exhibition room, Wychblayde walked boldly forward under cover of her invisibility.

Her senses more alert than Katana's, Wychblayde saw what came next before it happened. A mummy's fist shot out from between the bars of a cage, sending Wychblayde flying and knocking her cold. As ever against such creatures of darkness, Katana attacked with Shadowsword-Alpha. To his horror the mummy seemed quite unaffected by his attack. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Katana when the mummy threw a display case at him, which hit him easily. Another hit like that and he would be KO'ed too.

Cursing his rashness Katana began to fight more defensively. This worked until frustration at the mummy's seeming immunity to his sword-strikes brought about a change of tactics which lowered Katana's defences. The telling blow landed and he was KO'ed. And so it was that Wychblayde came to to see the mummy looming over the unconscious Katana. Her efforts to turn the fight round were to no avail and she was soon KO'ed again. Our pair of heroes came to dangling from the mummy's hands just long enough to hear the museum's alarms go off before the mummy knocked their heads together and they were unconscious yet again.

Katana and Wychblayde regained consciousness lying on the floor (and not in the clutches of the leering villain as I'd expected) and to the sound of fighting nearby. Katana sprinted to the scene to see the mummy fighting 4 of the Abhoroth daemons last seen in London, while a 5th beat a hasty retreat from the scene. The fight seemed like an even match, so we went to investigate the basement which lay beyond a shattered door nearby (clever move, eh?!). Sure enough, we found that the servants of the Children of Atlantis had got there before us, and the fragment of the Great Seal was nowhere to be seen.

Upstairs, and decided to leave the mummy and the Abhoroth to their fight to follow the trail of the daemon escaping with the booty, our departure was interrupted by the arrival of a flying figure wearing gold armour marked with an ankh which made him look for all the world like an Egyptian god. He promptly joined in the battle against the daemons.

Sensing what was afoot, Katana joined in. Shadowsword-Alpha didn't let me down this time, and 2 Abhoroth were quickly felled. Now outnumbered 2-1 the remaining 2 didn't last much longer. Katana was just readying himself to attack the mummy again when the new arrival called on me to hold.

Introductions were made. Ankh and the Mummy turned out to be members of the Brotherhood, Egypt's state-sponsored superteam. More than that, Katana and Ankh had mutual acquaintances. And so it was that, on learning of what had gone down in London, Ankh agreed to use his influence to get us onto a diplomatic flight to New York so that we could try to keep the remaining fragment of the Great Seal out of the hands of the Children of Atlantis.

And then to New York
Katana and Wychblayde presented themselves at the Guggenheim museum, where we were introduced to museum director Dr. Donovan. Donovan understood the seriousness of the situation and was glad to receive any assistance we could offer, and to offer any help he could reasonably agree to.

We then found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. Just sitting tight to wait for the cultists to arrive was unappealing not least because we had failed to stop them at that stage twice already. But setting out to investigate the Children of Atlantis in New York might leave us blindsided by the cult. A solution to this on Wychblayde's part- eg. a teleport device- was beyond her powers. In the end Katana had a brainwave [an 8 on an 8- roll on a newly acquired basic Deduction roll, bought with one of last week's EP at Bill's prompting!]- the London and Cairo attacks had both taken place at night. So we now knew that we had time to spare.

With Wychblayde checking the Children of Atlantis website, we soon learned that one Brother Edmund Stark was due to speak at one of their offices that very night. Stark was the leader from London I suspected had been lying doggo after that first fight. Things started to fall into place quickly now. A call to Ankh back in Cairo confirmed that Stark had indeed just flown out from Cairo. He was clearly responsible for the ritual implanting the Abhoroth in their human hosts. So we had a chance to prevent the attack on the Guggenheim from leaving its lair in the first place.

The denouement was quick and simple after that. We were ferried to our location in the Egyptian embassy limousine which had been at our disposal since we'd landed in New York. Wychblayde went to the meeting of the Children of Atlantis in her civilian identity. Katana lurked on the roof of the building with her weapon.

The meeting over, several people were hanging around afterwards. Wychblayde snuck out of sight, instant-changed into her costume and switched on her invisibility. Her magical powers were unfortunately detected, alerting people in the room. Noticing something was up, Katana decided to make his entrance via a skylight.

The fight which followed was fairly short. It was lengthened only by Katana's need to wait until Wychblayde joined him so he could pass her blade to her. That done, he dealt with Stark with a couple of punches. The SMG-toting goons were easily mopped-up thereafter.

Polices sirens could be heard approaching at this point. We decided to leave, taking Stark with us as our prisoner. As the day wore on we found out that our triumph was complete: the Guggenheim wasn't attacked; and Stark- who we'd delieverd to the Egyptian embassy- turned out to be wanted for crimes in Egypt. We made sure he was returned there.

**********

We had a lot of fun with this session just like last week. I enjoyed getting into the swing of things with Katana again, and having little details of his new story develop. It was also fun working on bringing the Katana/Wychblayde relationship to life- I had Katana question Wychblayde about her powers so she could perhaps come up with a solution to our dilemma. And only just making that Deduction roll when Bill was despairing of feeding us the solution was a buzz too.

But, just like last week, the HEROmods Bill had adopted were the big star. We were all amazed at how quickly the combats run under these rules. More than that (and again, just like last week), it was clear that there is more to the initiative-based SPD system than just ease of use. The unpredictability of when you will actually get your phases is psychologically excellent. The simple fact that I have to wait for Katana to enjoy the benefits of his high SPD- instead of it coming up regular as clockwork as it does using the SPD table; this generates a frustration which makes him rash and impetuous in a way that it was so easy not to be using RAW. I really liked the way that this simple rules change brought new life to a familiar PC.

Oh, and we got 2 EP. So Katana has passed the 300pt mark at long last. And he now has the Deduction skill he's long needed to make him a proper detective. Whew!

I rolled dice! I kicked ass!

He's blue, he's bad, and he's back!
I noted in passing a month ago that Bill's Wednesday roleplaying session had devolved into boardgaming. We'd retrenched the group to just 3 of us: Bill, Tony and myself; given some thought to what it was we wanted from our roleplaying; and turned to White Wolf's high-powered anime-style fantasy rpg Exalted. We'd played an introductory session or two using some pregenerated characters.

To my surprise (I have deep prejudices against White Wolf and all their works), I found that I liked the setting and enjoyed the game. Even the system wasn't too bad with Bill's tweaks. We were getting into the swing of things well enough for Tony and I to create our own characters, about which we were happily scheming. Then, just when we were ready to go, Bill couldn't GM for a few weeks. And, just when he was about ready to GM again, Tony couldn't play for a couple more on top.

Faced with these hiccups, and with little time at his disposal to put the work into Exalted he thought it needed, Bill decided to fall back on an old favourite- HERO Games' classic superhero game Champions. I confess I was a bit surprised at this, what with the fate of this much-loved game in its bloated 5th edition being a favourite rant of ours in recent times. But I needed no 2nd bidding when Bill told me I could play Katana.

Readers who know me might be wondering why it's taken me so long to mention ol' blue pyjamas here at RD/KA!. And this all the more so when I mention that I got my first ever tryout of Green Ronin's excellent Mutants and Masterminds (about which I was enthusing as early as March last year); that this tryout came in a Katana session Bill and I played as long as a year ago. My ace new superhero game; playing Katana; and I didn't mention it? There will be astonishment somewhere when this is read I can assure you dear readers!

Katana- or, to give him his full monicker:

Katana: Sword Against Evil™
A renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him.

Here he is, in all his original Champions character-template and cheap-felt-pens glory.

Anyhoo, Katana is the first Champions character I ever created. I can remember where I was at the time- the flat, the room, the very furniture are all vivid in my mind's eye as if I could reach out and touch them. I can see myself hunched over that rulebook. I can remember the thrill of being able for the very first time to create exactly the character I wanted. And I can remember my delight as I created a character which I was later to discover is every GM's nightmare PC: the psycho loner (I seem to recall that he had 50pts of Berserk disadvantages in that first incarnation; and that's 50pts out of a total of 150pts of disadvantages!). I just couldn't help myself. Y'see this was pure self expression.

That was nearly 25 years ago. Although Katana isn't all that experienced (he should hit 50EP next week), he's still my favourite roleplaying character. So the chance to get him out to strut his stuff again for a while was more than merely irresistible- it was a much anticipated joy. And so it proved.

For his part, Tony dug out a PC I'd GM'ed for him when we first started roleplaying together- Witchblade, complete with a shiny new character picture. (From Just Walls via the random Gnomes' random Lair; thanks for that tip matey!)

Of dubious parentage (half-Fey, half-daemon), Witchblade is a technomage with a nice line in costumes and a host of handy gadgets at her disposal. She is also even madder than Katana, since she has chosen to join the War Against the Ultimate Evil (you'll've guessed by now I imagine that this isn't regular 4-colour superheroics) with combat attributes little better than those of a fit human.


What went down
The opening session was simple enough: Katana and Witchblade (who've met, but have never worked together as such- Tony and I were swapping GM'ing roles at the time) arrive separately at the British Museum in London, where they are expecting skullduggery involving a new display of Atlantean artefacts. They conceal themselves in the area of the display. Skullduggery duly beginning in the dead of night, Katana did what Katana does best: he leapt in and started some serious thwacking.

A lucky hit almost took him out right at the start, but he soon started to deliver his infamous 1-punch takeouts to the goons. Witchblade meanwhile was doing some zapping with her magic weapon- which included swiftly levelling the villains' leader (suspiciously swiftly now that I think back- was he lying doggo I now find myself wondering); while her magic forcefield was absorbing most of the punishment the goons' own magical weaponry was dishing out, but soon she too was nearly down and out.

We recovered. We prevailed. Katana easily grabbed the last goon, who had finally decided that it was time to flee. Questioning was to ensue. This was interrupted by the 6 malicious-looking daemons who climbed out through the cracked rib-cages of some of the downed goons. Relishing a fight in which he could use Shadowsword-Alpha™, Katana attacked promptly. Taking 3 blows to fell a single daemon, he realised that these were not the soft touches their human hosts had been.

Meanwhile, one of the daemons had grabbed an artefact from the museum display and was making its escape. Unfortunately Witchblade had by this time fallen under the claws of 2 daemons. Fearing that they would feed, Katana had to rescue her, thus letting the unknown artefact leave in a daemon's clutches.

Grabbing Witchblade and slinging her over his shoulder, Katana crashed out through a skylight onto the museum roof in 3 acrobatic leaps. Unfortunately the 4 remaining daemons were right behind him. This was very bad, because the leaps had cost him most of his puff (he spent most of his END pushing his leaps), and his head was swimming with the exertion of his continued flight (END exhausted, he was taking STUN damage each time he spent END- only 1d6 sure, but rolling lots of 5's was a real scunner at this point!).

Witchblade had come to in the meantime, and was firing off blasts from her eponymous weapon- to little effect unfortunately. Things were looking seriously dodgy: a couple more bad rolls and Katana would pass out, leaving us both at the mercy of the daemons. In the nick of time he pulled just far enough ahead of the evil feckers to pause for breath. This advantage was never lost, and the chase petered out in the streets below, the daemons slinking off into the darkness of the night-time alleys of London.

The rest of the session involved sneaking around, lurking, calling in a favour, and a bit of breaking and entering as Katana and Witchblade followed up leads in search of clues as to who was behind the raid on the Museum, and to their purposes. Katana was his usual brusque and obtuse self throughout, while Witchblade rapidly established good cat-fighting relations with Sarah West, the contact who owed Katana that favour. By the time the session drew to a close, we had learned that we were dealing with the Children of Atlantis, a two-bit cult who we presumed were patsies for larger powers dedicated to those tragically familiar goals: raising sunken cities and awakening Elder Gods.

Don't be misled by the brevity of my treatment of that sequence. It was a lot of fun. We got plenty of laughs, enjoyed some good roleplaying, and savoured the feeling of getting into our stride again. This was what we'd wanted. It's just that, well, the fight was thrilling (it's what Katana does best after all- hitting things). More than that though, Bill was using several variants, most important of which was one dispensing with the SPD table in favour of initiative rolls. We all liked how this worked; Bill especially because he didn't have to do any record-keeping.

More even than that: that chase sequence across the roof of the British Museum? It was as dramatic as it was precisely because of the uncertainty inherent in the initiative rolls. The fixed sequencing of the classic SPD table simply couldn't've generated the same feeling of imminent doom. I liked it a lot. (Although I have to note, Bill, that I'm still not 100% sold on the idea that using a d10 instead of a d12 is a matter of indifference.)

And that was that: the return of Katana: Sword Against Evil™, that renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him. There'll be more.

PS. We got 2 EP's. ;)