fkr – Page 3 – Aboleth Overlords

Nausicaä FKR Catch-Up (Session 4)

Playing catch-up on the session reports for my Valley of the Wind game over on the FKR Collective Discord. We took a bit of hiatus off for the holidays as well as some work scheduling difficulties, so we played one session months ago, and one session just last week which I will make a post for soon. So this is a report for a session we played back in November.

This will be the short format I’ve been trying out on my Barrowmaze reports. Feel free to leave feedback, especially if you are a player in this game and I’ve forgotten details.

Cast

Player Characters

Ezel the wanderer, played by Truzzy_02
Gaspar “Sarge” Brunel, pilot and sharpshooter played by ceacelessCarbine
Nessa, a spy-on-the-run, played by Ven (gendernihilist).

NPCs

Olmay, young child found aboard a downed ship
Belsinde, Olmay’s mother and military scientist for Torumekia
Imnion, Torumekian mechanic

Summary

Returning to the group in a circular viewing chamber, looking down into a three-story room filled with the grey substance, the horrific man-shaped creature with the shiny dome helmet, and multiple prisoners latticed up in the goo.
The group coordinates a dual plan, many utilizing an ancient elevator shaft to get down into the first floor, while Gaspar shoots the creature with his seed cloud gun, freezing it temporarily.
Nessa and Ezel make their way to free two captured prisoners, but the helmet on the monstrous figures falls into the pool, animating into a worm-like shape, that slams and strikes both of them, injuring them both.
Nessa’s captures “helmet” falls into the goo, producing yet another threat. (I think I forgot to mention in the last report that they fought a dog-like creature with one of these, Nessa found her nullification effects temporarily held it off and was able to retrieve the helmet after Gaspar shot the creature).
Ezel utilizes a pressurized container taken from the circular, slamming into the creature but knocking him back.
The party continues to scramble, multiple gambits are run as the group frees Olmay’s mother and another prisoner.
Ezel is knocked unconscious and dragged by one of the creatures, heading towards a northern section of the complex as the party is separated.
Circling through the halls, the group reconvenes on the other side of Ezel as he is coming to, slowing and distracting his captor.
Ezel utilized a quick flint and spark wheel to immolate the arm of his capture. The flames turning the twisting gelatinous structure into cracked and brittle char.
Regrouping, the party plans their escape.

Thoughts

Lots of fun, lots of planning, and a lot of hectic rolls as many of the characters came very close to the risk of death – something I always leave on the table when anyone is wounded but making risky actions.

Lots of fun, inventive play. Lots of awesome in-character planning, coordinated attacks, fun use of powers and equipment, and overall a great environment.

Some of the details may be a bit sparse because this is off of notes I made months ago, so anything I forgot or got wrong I apologize for.

Nausicaä FKR Session 3

Summary

A wanderer joins the party as the group continues to explore the mysterious crypt below, dismantling a trap, accessing the center of the sunken labyrinth, and finding a horror within.

hard to find the exact image of what the crypt looks like, picture this but more cluttered with ancient debris

session report follows

Nausicaä FKR Session 2

Summary

The group sets out in search of a Torumekian plane downed in the Sea of Corruption, meeting Worm Handlers and a lost little girl, and discovering an ancient crypt from the days before.

session follows

Nausicaä FKR Setup & Session 1

Since FKR style play is getting more attention I thought it would be a good time to pitch an open table game using my Primeval 2D6 system over on one of the Discord servers devoted to the style.

I met up with other members and pitched a few games – running a West Marches style game, an investigative horror game, an Ars Magica-alike, as well as a game set in Hayao Miyazaki’s setting where the Nausicaä manga takes place.

Almost everyone immediately expressed interest in Nausicaä being their top pick, so we started discussing the game, potential places to play, character ideas, and we landed on playing somewhere out “off the map” so to speak in our own corner of the world, making it easier for players to drop in and out without knowing the plot, as well as letting us handwave a lot of details.

I should preface this and probably every session that I am notoriously anti-canon. I want to draw on the imagery, themes, and broad-level assumptions of any source I’m using – Nausicaä included. So if something contradicts established lore – that’s the canon of our game. This is by no means to disrespect the source material, the creators, or the fans, but rather to allow our table to celebrate the world in the way that’s the most fun for us.

chargen and session follows

Less Rules To Do More: Advancement

Advancement rules are another aspect of roleplaying that sees heavy mechanization. Which I totally get – I agree that games are about what they reward. How these rewards are illustrated, handed out, and utilized, however, has a variety of methods they can be handled with – and like everything else in this series I think you can get away having a fully featured and rich set of rewards without explicitly mechanizing them.

Primeval 2D6 Layout Update

Trying out my hand at learning Affinity Publisher, so I tried to make a two column spread for Primeval 2D6. I also tried to cut through my verbosity and trim it down to one page, hopefully I was successful at making a more usable text.

I am currently working on an example of how I use the game as a framework to play in a world along with an adventure. Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations for a “Play worlds, not rules” sort of product.

Also let me know your thoughts on the changes to the document, as well as any recommendations or tips while I am learning this stuff.

Thank you!

Less Rules to Do More: Wounds

One of the things I have done when running Primeval 2D6 is to get rid of the more abstract notion of hit points, number of hits, etc. in favor of a more descriptive form of injuries.

This has coincided with my attempt to move all of my old school-styled gaming away from discussions of numbers and mechanics, and instead towards a discussion of the fiction as much as possible.

details follow

Less Rules To Do More: Combat Maneuvers

In my previous post I suggest removing mechanics around the important parts of the game to see if a more freeform rulings style of play will give you what you looking for, instead of defaulting to adding new mechanics.

Let’s look at one of the most popular areas to begin to add rules to games: combat maneuvers.

Less Rules To Do More

Hanging out on forums, game design communities, discord servers and the like I come across a lot of people trying to hack games, old school D&D in particular to do more than what it currently does for them.

Some examples include things like:

Differentiating between “kinds” of hit-points, often breaking out concepts of luck, stress, actual physical damage into a variety of classes.
De-abstracting armor class, clearly defining between the kinds of armor that keeps blows from hurting you, and actions you perform to completely avoid these blows (such as dodging and parrying).
Adding concrete actions and reactions to combat – rules for called shots, active parries, specific classes of strikes, etc.
Various implementations and adjustments to the magic system.
Skills in general.
More nuances to the experience systems.

This is all great – hacking is very much in the spirit of D&D and roleplaying and definitely should be done. Some really awesome games have developed out of the tradition of grabbing D&D, removing stuff you don’t like, adding stuff you do, and putting your own mark on it.

What I want to do is make an argument for removing rules to do what you want, before adding them in. This may seem counter-intuitive – how can you establish something as a priority if you don’t have a concrete rule for it?

How I run Primeval 2D6

In my last post I wrote up a summary of a Primeval 2D6 session that I ran, and I got a lot of great feedback and a lot of questions about how I run a closer-to-freeform/FKR rpg. I wanted to write a follow-up post to kind of explain the how I did as well as clarify a few of the questions I received.