Not sure why I get so much pleasure from music with samples, esp audio clips from movies, but I do. I really do.
Over the weekend, we finally got the chance to play the second half of our Escape from Dino Island PbtA game. As an emulation of Jurassic Park, it’s pretty great: fast and deadly. As I mentioned on Twitter, before the game started, I suggested we start with two PCs each, since the game looked like it was designed to kill characters pretty quickly. The others poo-poo-ed that, telling me I could just make up someone new if I had to.
Two die rolls later, I was doing exactly that.
One of the mechanics in the game that I really liked was that the basic moves were broken into categories: Peril Moves and Safety Moves. When you make a Safety Move, you’re supposed to tell a story about your character (each playbook has a number of specific prompts, which you cross off as you go through them). At the end, when the story is wrapped up, either because the living PCs have escaped the island or they’ve all died, you roll for the denouement.
Like all PbtA games, you roll two dice, then add something to it. For this roll, you add the number of stories you’ve told.. 10+ gives you a great result, 6+ is a failure, 7-9 is a modest success. So, the more stories you tell about your character, the more sympathetic they are and the more beloved they are by the audience.
My character had made the Finale move, which was a self-sacrifice play to save everyone and wrapping up the plot. So while the other two players got to roll on the “Safe at Last” table, and both got the result “… describe something (an image or memory) you will carry with you from your time on the island.” which is the modest result, I rolled on the “Never to Return” table.
And I’d told four stories over the course of the game, so my roll was +4. And I had sacrificed myself for the group! And I rolled snake eyes.
That was the only roll I could have made and still failed, and I’d done it. The result I got was “… tell the others why you deserved your fate.”
Is life fair? It is not.
But I laughed my ass off, which I really needed. At this point in my life, I don’t get to laugh all that much. Not that I’m unhappy (I’m not) but I don’t find many things funny. Except when I’m playing in a game with terrific players.
Anyway, next up is a longer game (we hope) and the group has picked Liminal, a contemporary fantasy game set in London. (I’m not doing an accent.) It looks great, and I don’t just mean the art. Seriously, that art is amazing.
But for the meat of this post, and the whole reason I am doing these, let me link to a site I found inside the rulebook:
http://www.guerrillaexploring.com
It’s a site about people getting into places where they’re not supposed to be, and the pictures are cool. I really liked the concrete… rooms? tunnels? in the bowels of the Tower Bridge.
Anyway, worth checking out.
Take care of yourselves.