Session Report: Aftermath!

 

We plan on writing a number of different types of articles for this blog.  Many will be gaming-related, such as the new segment I will be talking about in this post, though we will also delve into other areas, such as film and television, comics, books, and a variety of other things we enjoy (so if gaming isn't your thing, stay tuned and don't hesitate to let us know what you would like to see). 

The new segment I am introducing today is Session Report. In session reports, we will talk about games we have played recently.  We will discuss the game, the system, and anything that we found interesting during play.  These will hopefully give you a glimpse into our gaming lives and also give you a taste of a game you may not have tried, or a different take on one you play regularly. 

This past weekend, I joined friends for a weekend RPG session.  The group has been getting together to play this game for almost 20 years now.  There have been many faces through the years, but a core group has kept the story moving and has helped to create not only a good story, but also a good environment for stories to bloom and grow.  It is the type of game that players love to relive and tell others about years later. 

The game itself is a sandbox environment set in an alternate version of our world where nuclear wars devastated the planet in the latter part of the 20th century, creating the classic post-apocalyptic setting in the system Aftermath!. The setting has plenty of mutants, cannibals, killer robots, and super advanced technologies, though you could play it super low tech if you so desired. The GM for this game uses a heavily modified version of the rules for this game due to the fact that you probably need an advanced math degree to use them as presented.  As it is, the system is extremely crunchy, so having someone who knows the rules well is a must for a group to enjoy themselves.  If you have that, however, you can have some fun with it, though the skills system can potentially drive you to drink with its highly-specific nature and sometimes bizarre prerequisites. 

Our particular setting is an alternate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The play originally centered on a society centered on a building called The Citadel.  We began as scavs, the poor saps who earned there room and board by venturing out into the city to face all manner of dangers to find anything useful to bring back.  Life expectancy was...low, though we eventually found out that The Citadel was run by a company that had a heavy hand in cloning, so they had an endless supply of bodies.  Our group eventually got tired of working for the bad guys and made an escape, settling in another part of the city in a community that was a little more forgiving and allowed our group to become a force of its own, complete with a freshly discovered survivalist base. 

Our group has the long goal of moving beyond the city and taking a larger role in shaping the future of the world in which they live.  In the meantime, they are building up their resources and a community to help them.  That means doing what they did before, but with better equipment and larger goals beyond a bottle of scotch or a rickety gun.  In the party this weekend, we had the following characters

• Hunter - Party leader and military jack-of-all-trades (also probably the longest-running character in the game, if you count all of the clone replacements...)
• Tool - Vehicular and demolitions expert (also had a completely separate personality, but he got better)
• Stitch - Psychic mentor to a group of kids with mental powers and seamstress extraordinaire (also the keeper of group momentum...if we take too long planning, chances are he will start something that will make sure we stop talking and start doing)
• James - Mutant with fur, super speed, and silky smooth fur (our own version of an X-Man)
• Luther - Shield man and muscle for the group
• Wraith (aka Tinkles) - Mutant kid with skin so tough he has better armor than many advanced armors
• Freezer Burn (aka Ziploc) - The only character I have ever known in the game to request a rapier as a main weapon...
• Rat Bag - Super young mutant kid with the power to clumsily talk to rats and zap himself when he attempts to do anything psychically.  He is totally 14 and not 9...
• Trigger - My character.  A grizzled weapon smith and sniper.  Also the subject of one of my previous post about whether or not to make my PC an NPC.  Would like nothing more than to be left alone in his workshop.  Never works out for him.  

This weekend we did quite a bit of what we usually do in this game:  plan.  We made plans for where we would head out to search for new and interesting things.  We made plans for our clan's people (lovingly named Meeples), and we made plans for what we would do when we weren't scavenging the city.  My character was able to start crafting suits of decent armor, which we were able to use both for our people and for good trading fodder.  I also made a pretty kick ass blowgun.  After gearing up, we headed to a market area called the Strip District and visited a market area in Mt. Washington that we helped recover after being devastated by an occupying force.  After these visits, we struck out in a new direction and found areas we hadn't searched.  During our trek, we endured a crazy blizzard and sub-zero temperatures, as well as a horde of starving rats that almost ate us before Rat Bag figured out how to make them go away.  Go Rat Bag.

One such new location was an industrial park that no one else had scavenged.  As a result, we were able to find some hugely important items like a warehouse of freeze dried foods, an intact ambulance, lots of car parts, and other goodies.  We encountered a new danger in bugs called Concroaches, big bugs that chewed up concrete and pooped out a quicksand that looked like concrete in order to trap anything walking across it, burying them so they can saw you to death and eat you.  It took us a while to figure out why the concrete was so unstable.  We had a number of crazy ideas.  We didn't consider bugs.  After a tussle with them, we decided they could have the areas they had claimed and focused on repairing vehicles so we could get our goodies home.

We did take a break from the industrial park to search a bit more north and encountered some warehouses that housed various parts to make Terminators.  Yes, those terminators.  Originally controlled by a rogue AI called PAN, we had thought they were done when we nuked the final safe house for PAN in a particularly epic final battle that included a bear armed with a nuke, and two party members making a final dash to ground zero before the nukes they were equipped with went off and doomed the whole party.  There was even an NFL-level spike of a party member as all three went up in a blaze of glory.  At any rate, imagine our surprise as we discovered a new group of terminators being built by our new nemesis, a group of sentient robots called NZT.  On our way sneaking out before they caught us, we encountered a building filled with large, unhappy spiders that took a dislike to us.  No party deaths, though James was poisoned and his powers sapped to mere human levels.  That is until his healing factor kicked in and he was fine. 

The rest of the game involved us fixing vehicles and planning our route home.  We have a plan for the next game session, so that means only 3 hours of planning before we play instead of 4.  In all, it is a great time, though.  People love the setting and the characters, and more than that, we love to get together and play this communal story that is the players to write.  The GM has a plot and is slowly guiding us towards the next major point, but the game and the story are mostly decided by us in a sandbox game that allows us to explore what a post-apocalyptic world might be like.  It ain't pretty, but it is fun.  Spending a solid weekend with a group you enjoy gaming with is never bad, even if it is a lot of planning...Next time we will hopefully see the return of some other players, including my lovely wife, and we will see what happens when you drive an ambulance and a van chock full of goodies through a desolated city intent on killing you for your last Twinkie. 

Player fun versus character logic: A dilemma

 

A shorter post from me for today.  I have been mulling over a decision as as player for a while now, so I thought I would tell you the scenario and see what you think.  Maybe you have had a similar sort of question, or perhaps you can just tell me that I am thinking to hard about this.  Which may very well be the case. 

Next weekend I will be attending a weekend session for a very long-running post-apocalyptic roleplaying game (Aftermath!, for those interested in the game, though heavily modified because the rules as written are...mystifying) .  In this game, I have a player character (PC) that has survived many years of game play in a game where the life expectancy was a session or two at best, but somehow has been able to survive getting shot multiple times, getting blown up multiple times, giant rat attacks, winged apes, crazy survivors, terminator robots, and a host of other dangers that plague the everyday scavenger. Even gravity itself hates my character in the game, as is evidenced by the fact that I have fallen so many times in the game and survived that the game master actually created a new skill just for my character:  falling.

My character seems to be in a good place in terms of skills, equipment, etc.  He is a gunsmith and armor smith by trade and the party finally found a base with an awesome workshop that has almost everything he needs to ply that trade.  The base is in a community that would value his contributions.  As a character, I always had in mind he was a reluctant scavenger and survivor.  He would much rather pass his time tinkering in the shop and helping the community rather than crawling around the ruins of the city, looking for things to kill him or holes to stumble into.  Impossibly, he has found what may be as close to a happy place as he could hope to find in the miserable world in which he lives.

As a player, I enjoy playing this character.  He has some great skills that can help the party, and not just the smithing skills.  He is actually a really good combatant and is not too shabby at scavenging.  I have lived with this character long enough that he is easy to get back into, even after extended stretches between play sessions.  I would love to see the whole arc of this character, especially considering the amount of time I have put into him and his story.  As a player, there is still plenty of story left in this character.

So where is the dilemma?  As a player, I want to keep playing this character for the fun and the utility of his contributions to the group.  But lately I have been thinking about it in terms of the character.  It seems like, for this character, he has found a place that he could comfortably "retire" from adventuring and settle down.  He could work in the base, outfitting the party and repairing what gear they need fixed before their next adventure.  He could be a huge, constant help to the community around the base, making arms and equipment for better defense, and teaching others his craft so that more people could help in the same way.  It seems like, given a choice, the character would happily slip into an NPC role.  The game master has even offered to come up with a system to continue to improve the character's skills as an NPC in order to avoid suspending all growth after becoming an NPC.

I am torn between what seems like the best choice for the character versus my enjoyment (and perhaps others in the party who may like adventuring with this character).  I know I could make another interesting character that would be a different story and journey, and the idea that I could have a mini game with the original character as an NPC is tempting.  But I like the character I am playing now and as I have said, i wouldn't mind completing his journey.  So there is the choice.  What would you do?

In the end, I think I will keep playing the character.  My enjoyment ultimately outweighs the potential choice a character might make since this is a game.  Games should be fun.  If I am having fun, then keep on keeping on, right?  Of course, you do know what this means:  the next session, my character's luck will finally run out and instead of becoming an influential and essential NPC, he will probably find some hole in the street, fall in, and be devoured by giant rats.  I guess that would just be par for the course in the harsh, sadness-inducing game world in which he exists...