"The geekiest thing I've ever done" / Aberrant play report

We played Aberrant last night. Once we'd finished, one of the players remarked that "that was the geekiest thing I've ever done". This was primarily because one of our core players is unfortunately over in Germany for three weeks on business, so joined via a G+ Hangout and Viber.
He paid €3 to watch me on a computer screen for two hours. I feel dirty yet oddly thrilled.

The players had opted to forcibly enter a Project Utopia Nova containment facility for questionable reasons - I.e. a wanted criminal had told them that bad things were happening there - and had understandably met with armed resistance.
First they took out a unit of heavily armed security guards, and we ended the session with my version of Captain America, Thor and Iron Man - Agent America, Aesir and Machine Man - arriving on the scene.

At the beginning of this session one of the player characters, a tank called Adonis, parleyed with them. He offered complete surrender if they would guarantee the safety of Solar Flair, another of the player characters, but as he didn't formally represent the team, he got punched through a wall instead.

I did have a plan for this session. The opposing team wanted the players to escape with their target so that the players could lead them to the rebel base (as it were).
Machine Man had an existing Mentor relationship with Adonis, so he was going to take a sucker punch from Adonis, letting the team escape and placing a tracker beacon on Adonis in the process.

It didn't go quite according to plan...
Solar Flair's player was 'a bit PMT' and played her that way.
She unleashed aggravated damage on both Agent America and Machine Man, nearly killing the Agent in the process.
Machine Man did manage to place the tracker on Adonis and say "make it look good, kid" whilst leaving himself wide open.
Adonis didn't take the bait. Instead he concentrated on getting the wounded to medical assistance and pretty much ignored the fight.
Max Control, the player's mind controlling bastard, dematerialised and took complete control of Aesir, landing an unexpected blow on Agent America and effectively turning the tables of the battle.

By this point, the dye was cast. The team had bought a gun to a knife fight. Solar Flair had used lethal force with no thought to the consequences. Max Control had violated one of the mightiest Nova's on earth and still retained control of him. A number of dangerous Novas had been released from containment.
The players retrieved their target, a teleporter called Gates, and left with her.
Adonis stayed behind to clean up the mess and recapture the released Novas.
Adonis' player has already created another character, one a bit less tank like.

I left the remaining player characters in the Antarctic, although they don't know that. They just know it's bitterly cold and everywhere is white.

It strikes me that if Novas were to build their own country, then Antarctica would be a place to do it...

Bringing the Aberrant smackdown / Conforming to my players expectations

I am faced with a dilemma in my Aberrant game.
Do I actively try to kill all the player characters in one session, or not?

The game has been ramping up to the point where the player characters find themselves opposed to the local equivalent of the Avengers and the cliffhanger for the last session was the seconds directly before a direct physical confrontation.
The players have uncovered evidence that Utopia are not all they seem to be, and have effectively teamed up with a recurring villain to break into a Utopia facility and free a Terragen affiliated Nova.
Which has put them squarely at odds with Alpha Strike, the city's primary Nova team and Utopian agents.

The players have seen this coming from a way off, especially as we took a six month mid season break, and have started statting new characters because they don't believe they'll be walking away from this one.

Which is the source of my dilemma.
They expect me to throw everything at them and to wipe them off the face of the game world, which is exactly what a team like the Avengers should do to them.
Thing is, I'd be an irresponsible Storyteller if I just threw a straight fight at them. I have no intention of killing them, this is a story encounter as well as a set piece combat.
But they don't know that. They have to go into this presuming that they should be putting their affairs in order. They also can't be allowed to think that I'm going easy on them.

I'm going to have to kill one of them.
Which one?
The Adonis, the honourable and reserved tank?
Solar Flair, the narcissistic and slow witted fire starter?
Max Control, the arrogant and superior mind controller with Terragen leanings?
Tim Roley, the shape changer with multiple personalities?

They all bring something important to the group dynamic. They're a pleasure to play with and easy to place in situations.

Who should I kill?

How the Virtual Adepts have upped my game / Social Media in RPG

I am on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram, Blogger and, um, email, I guess.
When I don't have a data connection on my Android Cell, I get itchy.
People could be communicating... without me!
I probably have a problem. A 21st Century addiction, no doubt.

I do love it when I can legitimately use social media, though, as I'm sure thousands of graduates the world over do when they say "I can set up the businesses Twitter feed, no worry".
I have been running Aberrant for my gaming group recently. It's been going very well. I finally get Aberrant, after 12 years, and can run it confidently.
The players have fully embraced their characters and the setting as well.

My gaming group, being consummate nerds, have always used internet tools to communicate. We originally used Google Groups to organise, share and discuss our games, then moved onto Facebook messages, because, like it or not, we're all on Facebook.
With Aberrant, though, the most delightful thing has happened.

In-Character profiles, status updates and fan pages. It's ace.

May players have set up:
Solar Flair's Official Facebook page and Twitter feed.

The Adonis' Facebook page

A Facebook page for Dan Peterson, the best friend of Max Control

In return, I've set up a Facebook page for a recurring antagonist, Arnold Deekus, as well as a Twitter feed for him ( @deus_rex_ad ), and a local news Twitter feed - @pulsecitynews

The end result is great fun. I've been running downtime activities and in character interactions using a mix of Facebook and Twitter status updates, Facebook messages, texts and emails, which has borne strange fruit, and definitely furthered the plot.

We're taking a break from Aberrant whilst I recharge my GM batteries, and someone else is running Black Crusade. We have been told that, unfortunately, Chaos Marines do not blog.
:-(

Cheating for fun and profit / Not everyone is created equal

I just remembered something important - NPCs, especially important ones, do not need to be legal starting characters.

They just need to make sense, be memorable and serve a function (other than "wank all over the players").

Start at the beginning / Aeon Trilogy timeline in Aberrant

I'm on a massive Aberrant kick at the moment, after the successful session I ran for my group last week and their exceptionally positive feedback.
We've one more session before our normal GM comes back from holiday and we resume our normal scheduled zombie apocalypse.

Thing is, whilst plotting out what I want to do with this next, last session, I've started thinking in terms of an ongoing game. This is probably a mistake.

Anyways, that aside, here's what I'm thinking...

Aberrant is very much a game if it's time. It was released in 1998 and is set in 2008, ten years after the first 'Nova' erupted.
Ten years of super (or Mega) participation has resulted in leaping technological progress and widespread cultural change. The world has embraced these enhanced beings, and is a different place because of it.
This is all great, until you run it in 2012. Now, the 'future' technology doesn't seem that impressive, and the world has turned. Events like 9/11, global recession, the first US black president, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese Tsunami, Swine Flu and numerous more have changed our focus away from the direction the game designers predicted. Which is understandable. And inevitable.

The core conflict in Aberrant still stands up - Novas, Terragen, Aberrants, Utopia, Proteus, Aeon, Divas Mal, The Directive et al are all functional and relevant. It's just the timeline that isn't.

Which is why I chose to run the game from the day the day the Galatea exploded in orbit and spread cosmic charged radiation all over the globe.

The player characters are new super beings in a world that has never known supers.
Right now, a lot is going to shit, and the players don't know it. They only know what happened to them, and even then they don't understand it. They're currently running scared with amazing abilities that they can barely control. They'll find out soon enough...

So, my plan is to run with the Aberrant timeline from the start, and make changes where required.
I'm pleased to discover that the Galatea exploded on March 23, and we played on March 27, so that with minimal fudging I could run a campaign in 'real time'.
Which is awesome.

Hello, my old friend / Returning to your favourite system

The game that really got me into paper and pencil RPGS was Vampire: the Masquerade, back with the Revised Edition in, what, 98? I'd been playing in a couple of other World of Darkness games prior to that - Vampire, Dark Ages, Changeling: the Dreaming, Mage: the Ascension - and chose the Revised V:tM as my entry point to serious GMing, or Storytelling, to use the game language.
I immersed myself in White Wolf products from then on, with little or no time for other systems.

Of late, I've tried to break out of that thought prison, and expand my horizons somewhat.
I'd already given d20 a shot in the early to mid 2000s, and looked elsewhere.
In the past year I've run Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu, both Gumshoe games, and Star Wars Saga Edition, a d20 derivative. I've also invested heavily in Pathfinder and dug out my In Nomine books.

Tonight the GM for the d20 Modern game I'm playing can't make it, so I've offered to run a one shot game.
After a short discussion, we've settled on a supers game, which means Aberrant.
As a result, I've been pregenning some characters, and I cannot express how good it feels to come back to the Storyteller (ing? I forget which is which) system. Filling in the dots. Not having to reference stuff constantly. Understanding things I do have to reference.
It's great.

More, please.

The perfect crime? / Post update

I have integrated my Aeon Trilogy books with the rest of our book case stock.

I wonder if my wife will notice...

Aeon Trilogy / Hiding stuff from my wife

I am a criminal. I went up in the loft this afternoon, on legitimate house storage business, and took the opportunity to re-introduce my Aeon Trilogy books to our shelves.
Adventure! was already there, so why not usher them all out into the open...

I love these games. They're Pulp, Cyberpunk and Superhuman games that run together into a two century long epic plot of human potential.
System wise, they birth both Exalted / Scion and New World of Darkness.
Presentation wise, they revitalized WWs book format, with in-genre setting material for the first half, and system & storytelling at the back. This made the first half readable as a standalone book. Rawrsome!

The three main books received critical acclaim when published, but didn't do well enough on the sales front to warrant continued support. Trinity, as the first game, received about a dozen supplements / story modules, and Aberrant got about six-ish. Adventure! stood alone, but was such a work of transcendental genius that it didn't need anything.

Let me be clear on that last point.
Adventure! is possibly THE best game of all time. Ever. Hands down.

Anyways, I was looking round the new WW website last week, and couldn't find anything to do with these games. Have they stopped supporting them? It would be a tragedy if they have.

Discontinued lines / Where do games go when they die?

I have been bereaved twice this year, as two game lines I own have been discontinued. It's a heavy loss, made harder by the fact that not one person has stopped to ask me how i'm getting on.
The world, it seems, does not care.

Yet, as I struggle to cope with life without the regular publication of supporting supplements and accessories,   I look up at my book shelf, and they're still there.
Maybe these books are the lifeless husks of the games. Maybe I should arrange a funeral.

So, in 2010, both Star Wars Saga Edition and The World of Darkness were discontinued. SWSE is no longer supported by Wizards of the Coast, as their product license has lapsed, and WoD is still marginally supported, with White Wolf producing the occasional PDF book as they clear out their possessions, and you can still get character sheets from their web page.

Back in, oh, 2003, White Wolf decided to discontinue the 'old' World of Darkness line, ending all support for it bar the occasional on-line bone, and to concentrate their efforts on the 'new' World of Darkness. One blog entry I read at the time pointed out that their Mage: The Ascension books were still on their shelf, and they could and would continue playing them for the foreseeable future.
In short, the game would not die.

Now, White Wolf / CCP have announced that their MMO game will focus on the 'old' World of Darkness. So the game has been revived.

There also seems to be a renaissance of 'old school' D&D, with games like Labyrinth Lord enjoying popularity and success. It looks like the original rule set for D&D never died, it just slept and has now resurfaced, riding the wave of 4th Edition backlash.

I'm trying to think of a game that has stayed dead. Maybe Chill. The old d6 West End Games Star Wars game, although many would argue that the game had such a massive effect on the expanded universe that it lives on. Or something.

Maybe that's the thing - as long as there's a fan base, the game will never truly die. Maybe that's horse shit. I've a load of books on my shelf now that are officially unsupported. That's pretty dead. Soon I'll struggle to get character sheets. The only sources of new material or discussion will be unmoderated, morally dubious fan sites.
There will be no news, no interesting or cool release around the corner. I will have nothing to covet or anticipate.
If I take these games to a new gaming group, they'll either look at me in blank incomprehension or make comments about retro gaming or old school systems.

I now possess the RPG equivalent of my dad's record collection.

The things you find

For years, pretty much since the New World of Darkness rule set was released, I've been itching for the Aeon Trilogy games - Adventure!, Aberrant and Trinity - to be revised using the Storytelling system. White Wolf have unfortunately said 'no' every time they've been asked about it, though. Apparently the D20 conversion was enough to convince them that the game line is not economically viable, no matter how awesome it is.

However, I have recently discovered that some saint on the interweb has concerted Aberrant to the Storytelling system, and called it More Than Human.

I am frankly incredibly excited about it.

It fixes some of the duff rules form the original (like somebody with Mega Strength 5 being able to automatically kill anybody else in the game with one punch. +25 automatic damage, as well as successes, whilst soak, armour, Mega Stamina, force fields and the like all stacked together struggle to provide that level of protection) and collating the revised powers from the players guide together with the main rules.

ow, if only I had the time to play it.