Make-it Monday: Bachelor Party, the RPG

Well, wedding week is here, and things are about to get cray-cray (to use the technical term). For this week's Make-it Monday, I am going to break with my standard format of posting about something that I made in order to post about something amazing that my best man made.

Are you not entertained!?
The BacheLOR at the Rat City bout

This past weekend was my bachelor party, and my best man concocted a scheme to turn the whole day into a giant RPG of sorts. I was issued a plastic breastplate and a novelty giant D20 and told that my character class was the BacheLOR. My class granted me certain powers, like the ability to summon fried snacks or tasty beverages. I could also bestow temporary tattoos on others. In order to do these things, I had to roll the D20. If I rolled poorly, there were consequences.

My friends at the party also had classes, and some even had costumes. There were rogues who could help me cheat at the rules, or issue "disguises", tanks who I could enlist to take on excess drinks or to smack poorly rolled dice, wizards equipped with potions, and paladins who helped ensure that everyone stayed safe and happy.

The day started with six hours of gaming, drinking and snacks at Café Mox. It then proceeded to "sexy lady time" which really meant watching a Rat City Rollergirls bout from the VIP section, because, let's be honest, Rollergirls are far superior to the more tawdry forms of "sexy lady" entertainment. The Rat City All-stars kicked the crap out of Baltimore, and our group garnered a bit of attention from the emcee. After the roller derby, we closed out the night with more drinking at a pub near my house. I ended up stumbling up the front walk of my house around midnight, covered in temp tattoos, wearing a plastic breastplate and monster hat with a pair of balloons tied around one wrist (mostly the result of poor rolls). I can't imagine what my neighbor who was out for a smoke thought of the sight.

My best man has agreed to let me post the rules for the bachelor party RPG here, but he wants to  do a couple things to secure his rights as the creator first. I'll update this post with the details as soon as he sends them. UPDATED BELOW!

In other news, if you are in the Seattle area, I will be giving a talk tonight at Lucid Lounge as part of Nerd Nite Seattle. The talk is about space, not gaming, but it should be cool. Come check it out!

UPDATE:

You can check out the full rules for the Bachelor Party RPG here. All rules documents are the original creation of Douglas Willott. If anyone else is interested in having a custom-built party adventure made for them, Doug is eager to help. You can email him at doug@douglaswillott.com. He can do any kind of event that begs for adventure, not just bachelor parties.

U is for Unbelievable

As in, unbelievable feats! Unmatchable accomplishments! The unquestioned stuff of true legend. Today I would like to highlight a rule that I have added quite successfully to my game that encourages my players to think outside the box and to think beyond, “what will the rules let me do” to “what would be really awesome right now?”

Axe Cop knows awesome, personally.

I call it, “The Rule of Awesome.”

Based on the core game mechanics, any player’s turn represents approximately 6 seconds of game time (1/10th of a minute). A character is allowed to move and complete a single standard action during that time, or move twice as far without otherwise acting. A standard action is anything from casting a spell, to hitting a guy in the face, to leaping onto the back of a troll. This move/act mechanic is at the heart of 3rd edition D&D, and was fully sloganized in 4th edition by the phrase “move, minor, standard” (a minor action being something less than a standard action).

Well, while this keeps things fairly simple to remember, it can also cause things to get boring really fast. My custom Rule of Awesome allows players to go beyond these rules to do something that might take the same amount of time as running 30 feet and stabbing someone, but that is considerably more epic.

Here’s a real example from my game: My players were battling some wyvern riding orcs while riding on an airship-like ya do. One of the wyverns was carrying off the ship’s pilot. In an effort to rescue the pilot, one of my players asked if he could activate his magic earring that caused him to double in size, charge across the upper deck, leap off the cargo crane and onto the back of the fleeing wyvern. An UNBELIEVABLE FEAT OF AGILITY, right!?

Well, if I had stuck with the rules, he would have had to make a jump check to get on the crane, a balance check to run along it a second jump check to leap off and an attack to hit the wyvern. Lots of rolling, lots of time taken, lots of opportunity for failure. Using the Rule of Awesome, however, all of this was accomplished with a single roll.

The rule works like this. If a player wants to do something really unbelievably epic, they first narrate their intended feat of derring-do. If they have a relevant skill they will be using, they let me know. I then roll a d100 percentile dice and mentally adjust the median according to the difficulty of the task, the character’s skill level and how awesome the thing is that they are going to attempt. The closer to 100 the roll, the greater the success, the closer to 1, the greater the failure. In this case, the player rolled a 98. His character vaulted flawlessly off the crane, landed on the back of the fleeing beast, driving both fists into its shoulders and sending it crashing to the deck with him on top of it.

My players have taken advantage of the Rule of Awesome on several occasions, sometimes leading to a truly epic moment of gameplay, other times leading to a facepalming moment of defeat. Either way, it sure beats. “I run over and hit that guy.”

Don't ask. Just let it happen.