S7S Pick-Up Game: Session 2

The GM who runs the Savage Worlds Eberron campaign that I play over Skype canceled last week, so I agreed to run a second session of Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies for the remaining players. Running this game with no warning and no prep is slowly teaching me the art of the pick-up game, which is an area in which I've been historically uncomfortable. S7S makes this approach relatively easy compared to many other systems for a number of reasons.

-As written, the rules dictate that the players describe their character's successes and failures in play. This removes some burden of creative output from the GM's shoulders.
-The players have a currency (style dice) with which they can take some directorial control of the game.
-Play regularly generates story hooks, which are keywords that the GM is obligated to use in shaping future scenes and sessions.

All of these factors make the game a playground for proactive players, and if the GM comes to the table with little to no agenda, it isn't really a problem. (And with this being a pick-up game, I don't think I could bring less agenda if I tried.)

Some really cool descriptive flourishes came out of letting players take charge of narrating successes and failures. I think my favorite description came from the player playing a knife-fighting spy. His roll in combat determined that he took a fairly serious wound but took out all four of the minions he was fighting in the process, so he described the gradually escalating exchange and finished it with something to the effect of, "...and when the last pirate tries to make a break for the door, I grab a banquet chair from the nearby table and hurl it into his head, knocking him out!" It was wonderfully swashbuckley.

Strangely enough though, I found myself eager at points to take charge of narrating the results PC checks. I didn't initially expect to feel that way, but now that I've had time to think it over, it actually makes a lot of sense. When I (as the GM) narrate the results of all PC and NPC actions, I can make sure a constant tone is maintained, and furthermore that the tone is something I like best. For example, I like combat narration to stay PG-13, but some of the players are more comfortable providing graphic descriptions of gore when they down their foes. This left me experiencing a more gritty-feeling game in some scenes, which was counter to the lighthearted, swashbuckling adventure tone that I imagined the game having.

In any case, at the end of the session, all of the players said that they'd enjoyed playing, so that felt really good. I hope our GM is well enough and free enough to run his game this week. If not, one of the other players might run a one-shot. We'll probably revisit the S7S game again in a few weeks, and thanks to the rules that generate story hooks from play, I'll at least have a few keywords to work off of as I pull the threads of another impromptu adventure together.

PDQ#: Scaling Fortes by Genre

One role-playing game that I've run and enjoyed recently is Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (often abbreviated as S7S). The system that runs the game is called PDQ#, and it's available for free as a pdf. (Though I strongly recommend taking the plunge and buying S7S if you like what you read in the free PDQ# pdf as it has a much more extensive treatment of the rules.)

Also, I'm a big fan of shounen fighting anime shows like Naruto and Bleach. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children qualifies as well. Pretty much any anime that involves characters defying physics, throwing energy bolts, and shouting the names of special attacks while they perform them will probably go over well with me.

Recently, I had a thought on how to make PDQ# more capable of handling the gravity-defying fight scenes of my favorite shows. All you'll need to do is write a short list of genre assumptions with a single reference to game terms for each. I'll give an example here using leaping. In the anime I like, trained characters seem to be capable of easily leaping from the ground to rooftops. Using that, I'll write the following.

"For characters with an appropriate forte (ninja, acrobat, etc.), leaping from the ground to a two-story rooftop is an Average (Target Number 7) task."

Bam! Other than considering the appropriate fortes to be secret, technical, or esoteric (PDQ# p. 16), that's all you really need. Other target numbers can be easily ball-parked from there. For example, let's say that Cloud (of Final Fantasy VII fame), with the Master [+6] Ex-Soldier forte has some leaping to do.

Cloud needs to leap to a rooftop from the ground (TN 7). TN 7.

Cloud needs to leap to a rooftop from the ground (TN 7) in the dark (+2). TN 9.

Cloud needs to leap to a high (+2) rooftop from the ground (TN 7) in the dark (+2). TN 11.

Cloud needs to leap to a very (+2) high (+2) rooftop (TN 7) in the dark (+2) while Sephiroth (+2) slices free chunks of said building and sends them plummeting toward him (+2). TN 17.

And so on. I think this is a lot easier than finding out what kind of astronomical forte modifiers one might need on the normal human scale to achieve the crazy TN you'd have to come up with.