Predator, Columbia: Session 0

We just had our session 0 for our Predator, Columbia game. It was pretty cool and we collaboratively built out the feel for the game. 

This is the first game in a series (campaign?) we are calling 80s Hero Action.

Attached is the PDF of our session after we exported it from MURAL. Pro Tip: We noticed that downloading it gives it a much better resolution than viewing in a browser. 

Session 0 Mural

Mural is an awesome collaboration tool that I use for teaching online courses and in facilitating everyday work. You can check it out at https://www.mural.co/ 

Tom Clancy's The Division for Savage Worlds

Here is our latest pass at Tom Clancy's The Division as a Savage Worlds Setting.

The Division Setting

Turning the Setting Sheet into a Online Collaborative Google Document

My sister and I wanted to work together on converting a setting from a book we had both read to Genesys. This is in preparation for her first time running a game. We started with just a conversation on how cool it would be to see some of the things we experienced in the book at the table. We spoke about how those things would work in Genesys.

We have used Google apps for a few other things and decided to make the setting using Google Docs. We knew that we could probably just start playing and wing it. We also wanted the practice so we did it this way. It worked great when I was traveling and we could collaborate online.

After making the better part of the setting, I made a generic version. I hope this helps.

Simple Fantasy Game Flow Example

When we were experimenting with the adventure creation flows first shown in FFG Star Wars for Genesys, we came up with this simple adventure flow. We hope it helps someone who is looking to simply try out something like this.

World of Warcraft for Genesys Alliance Archetypes and Species

We usually just sit down and start playing a game. We don't take a ton of time to flesh everything out for the entire setting. This has served us well. When we decided to do a game in World of Warcraft we simply tried to figure out the Archetypes. We knew the careers would work out easy with the core book.

We decided on using some of the storyline for the current expansion and began a game in Stormwind. We had fun with the concept of guilds. They were more like companies. Some large and powerful. Some small and scrappy. Contracts and Reputation became a big focus. Reputation is right out of the online game. Low reputation doesn't get you treated as bad as it would in a table top rpg though. Contracts were like taking on quests.

So far it has been a blast.

This is pretty much all we had to start with.

Don't try to get it all right. Play it to prove it was the right thing to do. Fix whats broken later. 

World of Warcraft Family Game

Our latest family game is set in World of Warcraft. We were inspired by watching Terry Crews play in a CelebriD&D game. See it here.

We loved the way their game went and wanted to capture some of that in ours. We want to alter the system as little as possible and keep our dice pools small. 

We have found a really awesome and large setting translation online. See it here. When we have an idea we just want to get started and not have to study to play it. So we used the generic fantasy rules in base game and looked to The Realms of Terrinoth for a few things.

Paul wanted to play a Gnome Warrior who looked like he was out of some anime with a gigantic weapon. He really enjoyed the irony of huge weapon and tiny fighter. He was easy to make after using the Gnomes from Terrinoth.

Amon wanted to play a Death Knight. He ended up with a mounted warrior theme. He was a perfect fit for the Revenant in the core book. He wanted to reflect his Night Elf origins but did not purchase any talents to do so at the start of the game. He plans to do so later.

My sister wanted to play a Night Elf Druid. This is her first time playing and she had not played an RPG since she was in high school and I got her to play D&D with us. She pays particular attention to the background and personality of the characters are and what situations they find themselves in. She is secondarily focused on learning the rules as she wants to run a game in the future.

My wife actually joined us in this one and also played a Gnome. A mage for her which was perfect for a simple Arcana skill.

So far things are great.

I like to share some of the tools that we use. Here is a few of the NPCs from our game where Gnomergan disappeared.

Warhammer 40k Genesys

This is an updated version of the Warhammer game that we were running before. We were inspired by a demo of Wrath and Glory at Gencon. We already dig the Genesys system. We wanted to make us roll less dice and still investigate the Warhammer 40k setting.

The blog has a lot of this content published earlier, but we found it to get a bit out of hand quickly and we had to house rule a good deal of things. This conversion did a better job of bringing it in line with the common Genesys content.

Hopefully more to come in the future.

Click here for the PDF

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for FFGs Genesys RPG

This is a game that me and my dad made for TMNT. We made it cause I wanted to GM my first game. I thought it would be a cool game to run.

Making the characters was hard because all their differences. I liked searching for the pictures the most.

We made the Foot ninjas easier to beat, but the Shredder is very powerful.

The turtles are all starting characters made with the Genesys book. They are not epic level heroes.

TMNT Archetypes, Careers, Equipment, Weapons

Mutant Turtle Archetype

3 Brawn
3 Agility
2 Intelligence
1 Cunning
2 Willpower
1 Presence

Starting Wound  Threshold: 12 + Brawn
Starting Strain  Threshold: 8 + Willpower
Starting Experience: 100

Mutant Turtles gain 1 rank in the Resilience skill without spending experience.
Shell Shield: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are tough and have very durable shells. They start with a melee and ranged defense of 1.

Ninja Career

A Ninja (忍者; plural ninja or ninjas) is one who trains in the art of ninjutsu. They were originally assassins and spies in feudal Japan.  A male ninja is called a shinobi (忍び), while a female ninja is called a kunoichi (くノ一).

The Ninja counts the following skills as career skills: Athletics, Brawl, Cool, Coordination, Deception, Melee, Ranged, and Stealth. Before spending experience during character creation, a Ninja may choose four of their career skills and gain one rank in each of them.

(If you’re playing where this skill is available, switch Ranged for Ranged [Light] to better represent a Ninja's preference for smaller archery and thrown weapons.)

Weapons

Nunchaku: Damage +1, Crit 4, 1 hp, Engaged Range, Unwieldy 3, uses Melee skill
Bo Staff: Damage +2, Crit 4, Engaged Range, uses Melee skill
Katanas: Damage +3, Crit 2, Engaged Range, Defensive 1, uses Melee skill
Sai: Damage +1, Crit 2, Engaged Range, uses Melee skill

Here is all the stuff

Here is a higher quality version

Cousin Hsu Chien for the Big Boss Adventure in FFGs Genesys RPG

Today I quickly made the stat card for Cousin Hsu Chien.

He was supposed to be the main character of the movie according to the Wikipedia article. A new director chose to highlight Bruce Lee's Cheng Chao-an character. The rest is history.

Higher Quality PDF Version Here

Big Boss for FFGs Genesys RPG

This is RPG about the movie Big Boss that my dad and I put together after watching Bruce Lee flicks one weekend. We never created an NPC sheet for the actual Big Boss...

We had fun looking for the info on IMDB and Wikipedia. We just used the base rules.

We did this cause it sounded cool.

Here is the stuff

Higher Quality PDF Version Here

Updated Magic Spells list for FFG Genesys RPG

We decided to put out an updated magic chart that helps us with the psychic part of our games. We looked at the tables and explanations of the other categories (Arcana, Divine, Primal) and decided what we thought fit for Psychics. We also included the standard categories because its easier to see which spells go with which skills. With our Warhammer Game it was kind of imperative that we had a Psychic Skill.

Printer Friendly Version:

If you would like a higher quality version, please contact us! :)

Gaslight DC for Genesys

My sons and I were inspired to create a FFG Genesys RPG Setting by a now defunct MOBA game called Infinite Crisis. This game was set in a crossroads of worlds and allowed for players to play DC Heroes and villains from all aspects of the DC Universe.

Two great Sites for info on the MOBA and thus great information for the setting.

http://infinitecrisis.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Crisis_Wiki

https://infinitecrisis.gamepedia.com/Infinite_Crisis_Wiki

One of the most compelling was its focus on the victorian or gaslight genre of their heroes and villains. This is best detailed the comic book Gotham by Gaslight.

This is now a movie.

So we started creating characters and NPCs and then formed some adventure ideas around it. We made changes to the way it normally would be. We hope they are fun,

In this would we made Harley Quinn the maddened mastermind and the Joker is a savage brute. Will either of these be your Batman's arch nemesis?

One difficulty was building Batman. Batman is just two awesome. Even Year One Batman has all the potential to be one of the big 3. So we tossed that difficulty out of the window.

In Genesys we decided to go with playing "a" Batman. We decided we would make a series of them and you could play the aspect you want. Our starter one, for instance is a Batman of high society that focused on his station in life being his primary tool to fight crime. That is a pretty different outlook. The same desire to fight crime is his flaw. It is a vengeful compulsion. He can’t help it.

We will look at more. A Batman that focuses on his combat ability to smack up the ruffians is sure to come…

Anyway here is the content created thus far. Characters and NPCs are meant to be cut out and glued onto both sides of 3x5 index cards. Contact us if you want a higher quality version.

Warhammer 40k played in FFGs Genesys RPG

My sons and I did a spur of the moment Warhammer 40k game in Fantasy Flight Games Genesys last night. Genesys is a Generic RPG framework that we seem to be loving more and more. We have been playing around with it quite a over the past few weeks. Our actual game play has been light though. We just dived in last night. We picked up notebook paper and jotted down on the barest essentials for characters and starting rolling.

It was super fast. We simply used RAW (rules as written) for character creation. We had to adjust the concept of starting equipment. Space Marines and all...

We wanted to keep dice count low so we tried to make characteristics in the norm. We considered using the super hero tone in the back of the book. Tones are like genre's in Genesys. Unfortunately, this would have added more dice to count so we avoided that. We decided to deal with the power extremes narratively.

Our Warhammer Grim Dark Future...
My younger son has not experienced the Warhammer 40,000 world so we, my older son and I, briefed him on it. We kept it PG-13. We described The Imperium of Man as an attempt to nobly bring all of lost humanity back together again. We left out the by-any-means part...

War Gear pt 1
Mechanically we started with a Bolter being the center of relative damage. We designed around this afterwards.
We made a Bolter damage 8 and crit 3, short range and gave it the blast and autofire qualities. None of it was precise, but it was crazy fun!

Character Creation
Character creation took 5 min with my younger son and 10 for my older son. The older was making a psyker. We did this mostly RAW. We used the 4 Archetypes and the available and appropriate careers. We distributed appropriate equipment for the game, though it was way under precise power as detailed above.

Adventure and Campaign Design
Collaboratively we created the adventure/campaign. We started with questions. I asked my younger son what is something common a Space Marine would do. He said kill people. We reinterpreted that answer (his mother would not approve...) to something like "Engage in Search and Destroy Missions"... I asked my older son what is something that could commonly go wrong on a mission like that. He said something like "The Squad Gets Overwhelmed". I added the last piece in, just to answer the question why... A
Traitor!

My younger son wants for us to stay rules light. He brings awareness to how much we focus on the mechanics and how little we focus on the fun. The higher detail he feels takes away from the game. He is a big proponent of Narrative over tactical. He is our inspiration for keep it simple. The quickly written character sheets were awesome. We just used notebook paper and started playing. I love his desire for simplicity.

War Gear pt 2
After speaking with Gaming Ronin and Dungeon Musings on the Unofficial Genesys Google+ Community. I added in a war gear hand out. Still trying to keep it simple. This kept things fun while allowing for each group; Humans, Eldar, and Orks to do their thing. It's not precise or power appropriate, but was a great deal of fun and super fast. My older son is the Warhammer 40k expert now. His knowledge has surpassed mine. He reads more than I do. I am so proud of him. :-) He made sure that the Psyker Armor provided protection from the warp and such... It comes in the form of a piece of equipment called a Psychic Hood. I think he said protect from negative effects, and amplify the psykers ability.

Funny story: My older son told me about this after the game. In the game he took a "double despair" critical hit that destroyed a piece of equipment. He cringed at the thought of it blow off his head piece. :-)

The System Now this was something to geek out about as a cool aspect of the Genesys system. The boost die does exactly that. By increasing advantage rolled, it removes threat and thereby reduces negative effects. It may actual add success and advantage representing the amplification.
I enjoyed it so much I put them into a format that my older son and I have been playing with for the past few days. Here is what we have created so far. Contact us if you want a better version.

Here is a higher quality PDF