+1
I’ve enjoyed the first two issues of this. No idea who these guys are, and I occasionally mumble to myself “I don’t think that’s how that works?”, but it has been a very fun listen!
2 Likes
Yeah, they do some mechanical stuff kind of weirdly (initiative springs to mind) and two players is an uncomfortably small group by my standards, but the pulpy WW2 era plot set in the DCU is interesting. Certainly curious to see how it turns out.
1 Like
I dropped them some feedback on the first episode, and a lot of it seems to have taken hold, so that’s pleasing. 
1 Like
Thank you all for watching our game. PLEASE let me know of any rules we are messing up. This game is very different than any game we have played before which is a good thing, but it still feels foreign.
@dprcooke Can you give an example of things we have messed up?
@Chief_Lackey_Rich Please let me know what we need to clean up. Initiative is handed off by the players, right?
@TakeWalker Your feedback was invaluable! Thank you so much and keep it coming!
We are adding new players soon but the idea to start was a sort of DC version of Marvel Team Up where we would focus on 2 players. Since we play short games, I have found that fewer players work better for that format.
@dprcooke We were running DnD 5e and then Hyperborea (pretty much DnD 2e) for the past few years online. We were looking to change it up and play a different genre. We really stumbled on to this game by accident on Reddit. Very happy with it!
Thanks!
Trevor
2 Likes
Yep, although the GM still decides who goes next when it’s an NPC going (including the scene tracker, which goes at the same time as the environment if there’s one in play). The GM decides who goes first each scene (which could be one of his NPCs or the tracker, letting him choose the second “go” as well) but after that whoever went last the previous round decides who goes first next round - which can be anyone (or thing, for the tracker) except their own character. There have been a few times where you seem to have decided who started each round, rather than each scene.
It’s important because there are some tactical choices to be made when it comes to manipulating who ends the round and controls the start of the next one. Also limits your desire to hog the initiative and just have your whole side alpha strike back to back, because your surviving foes are likely to repay that by effectively getting two turns each before you can go again. Neither side wants to let the other go last in most rounds unless they’re very confident they can take any potential big counterpunch.
Of course as GM, you also don’t have to make the best choices all the time. You can often cut the players a break by choosing the scene tracker early in a round when it would shift into Yellow or Red and then pass to a player, letting them use a more potent ability than they expected to. One caution I’d advise is not to just go with one minion or even lieutenant and then pass back to the heroes. It gives the villain side too much control over who ends the round since you can just outwait the heroes, so it’s better to go back-to-back with about H (= #of heroes) minions or 1/2H lieutenants before passing back, at minimum. Not a hard and fast rule, just something that’s worked for me in the past.
Glad you guys are enjoying the game! Always good to see more content for it online.
@RollingWithAdvantage For better or worse I listened to the first two episodes one right after the other, while working/running errands, so it’s hard for me to pin down specifics. I certainly had a lot less “Is that right?” questions during the second episode.
Player-created minions: Normally player-created minions act at the Start of the player’s turn. I think in Ep 1 you had the cosmic minions all attack immediately after Bucky created them. (They were also destroyed very shortly afterwards by Panzer, so I ended up appreciating the fact that they got to act).
Initiative: @Chief_Lackey_Rich got this.
I will say that I rather enjoyed how you hand off starting initiative at the beginning of a combat scene to whoever was moving faster/paying more attention (i.e. had initiative within the story). It works well.
Environment Turn: So this isn’t an actual error, but I did notice that in both of the first two episodes the environment turn consisted solely of twists. (Or maybe it only seemed like they did and I’m wrong?) That’s not wrong, and you can do that. But it’s not your only option when designing the environment.
Twists: Another not-an-actual-error is that, when generating twists as a result of the players’ actions, it seemed like only the twist prompts on the hero sheets were used. Again not wrong, but as GM you have other options if you want to use them.
Additional options include environment twists, mechanical twists (take damage / take a hinder based on Min die), or just make something up.
If my perception is off, or if you’re aware of these options but choosing not to use them, that’s totally fine.
One thing I’ll add: I think having you play Dr. Sasquatch as a sometimes-third-hero is a good solution to having only 2 players. He fits very well in the story, and it allows you to scale the fights to be more dramatic.
Can you give some examples on what else an environment can do other than twists? I must have missed that part in the book.
2 Likes
Well, technically everything they do are twists, but a twist can be just about anything. All those suggested options on pages 244-245 are twists, and could either be employed as part of an environment writeup or when a player (or rarely, NPC) triggers a twist - and to confuse things further, the GM can pick an environment twist to go off from a PC doing something if it seems right. It might be easiest to look at as environment writeup as a menu of suggested twists that might happen in a scene, with at least one happening each round as the scene tracker ticks onward. Minor twists can be repeated if you like, majors (by definition) only happen once at most, and might not happen at all if you don’t think they fit.
All that said, fjur provided a bunch of nice examples of environments right here on the forum and if you go over to my blog index here and scroll allllll the way down you’ll find another nine samples to look at. Fjur’s is probably a better learning tool, he’s better about following the guidelines in the rulebook (pages 240-247) than I am - mine cheat more often and tend to be a bit harder than they should be sometimes.
2 Likes
Yes, that’s a good technique. If the PCs are all screwing around and not paying attention the baddies get the jump on them, but usually someone’s listening to your scene description and they get rewarded for it.
My usual solution to small player groups is to give each player a reasonably tough lieutenant or two to control as they like (within reason - GM veto for suicidal stupidity applies). They could be minor heroes, or a “casual” sidekick or hanger-on, or a mundane ally like a literal police lieutenant or neighborhood watch captain, or even a minor villain who’s got common cause to work with the hero for a bit against a greater threat - whatever fits the story at the moment. You could do a larger group of minions instead, but I find lieutenants (especially if you roleplay them well as NPCs) get the players more invested in their well-being since they last longer. Let 'em heal a die size every time a hero would heal a zone and help out with healing in montages and they may even survive a session while helping the PCs stay in action.
2 Likes
The most recent issue I ran involved my players sneaking through a prison. So at the start of each environment turn, I made whichever hero had acted most recently in the scene roll an overcome to not be discovered/raise suspicions. Failure would advance the scene tracker an extra space.
In another issue, this time involving an invasion through inter-dimensional portals, I used the environment scene to add new villain minions to the scene every round as long as the portals remained open.
I think what’s confusing is that environment design is about coming up with the dice pool and the potential environment twists. But how the environment acts, if at all, is determined as part of the rules for the Scene. So the question “what does the environment do on it’s turn?” isn’t actually answered in the environment design section of the rulebook.
Note: When it comes to Initiative/Turns, I cheat and have merged the environment and scene tracker. It’s simpler: Pass to the environment → do environment effects per Scene → environment minions [if any] act → advance scene tracker → Pass to [next]. It’s okay to cheat in this game!
1 Like
Here’s a couple from some of the various adventure issues put out by GTG:
Actually, after scanning all of the issued adventures, the scene rules all contain either
- Add a threat/minion to the scene, or
- No environment turn rules at all.
In the case of 1, the “add a threat” environment turn rule is listed right after the environment description.
Well, yes, but an environment by default always activates one of its twists if there’s at least one active threat in play. Most environment writeups (including the ones in the rulebook) just fold the threat generation part into the twist menu, eg the Storm Portal major twist on page 246 dumping minions into the scene. Adding threats is really just a type of twist, and the bit about adding a threat is there to ensure you pick a GYRO-valid twist that generates a threat if there isn’t one out already. That Storm Portal twist would go off the first time the environmnet acts in Yellow with no environmnet threats in play, but even if that situation recurred (because the heroes defeated all the Storm Imps) it would trigger again because its a major twist. Minor twists that introduce threats can recur if the scene is “empty” of environment threats, but you can always cheat/give the heroes a break and ignore that.
Think the design intent is to give the PCs something to use their “target a minion” abilities as often as possible so they don’t go dead early in a fight, but I might be wrong.
That’s not really a cheat, it’s almost exactly what the rules tell you to do on pages 157-158. The order they recommend is advance scene tracker > environment threats all act >introduce new threats if there aren’t any > activate an environment twist if you didn’t introduce a threat but your sequence won’t change much. Might change someone’s status die “late” if the scene went to a new GYRO zone this round, but the impact is going to help as often as it hurts if it matters at all. Scene and environment are always one connected turn.
You can script in more stuff to happen (like the flood of minions you get in that outdoor press conference you cited) but that’s a scene-specific rule, not how environments generally work. That scene’s very light on opposition and starts with some semi-friendly minions as well, so it gets a lot of hostile minions added in over time to offer a challenge. Even at that it sometimes needs some tuning - a team with no multi-target Attack or Hinder abilities is going to get swamped if you use their recommended numbers, while a team with a really efficient minion-sweeping setup may call for some robot cops getting updated to lieutenant status just so something survives to attack.
Also important to remember that new threats never act the turn they’re introduced, barring some specific twist effect saying otherwise. I still forget that one myself sometimes and get yelled at by my players for it.
Episode 3 is up. It was a shorter game because Roll20 had server issues. It’s good to finally be able to play again after the holidays!
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
4 Likes
Fun watch.
You guys are getting the rules down a lot better as time goes by. Only thing that jumped out at me was at 45:00 in. Those four hindered minions that got hit by the following attack from Starbuck would mostly have been knocked out. The one that rolled a 5 would have been modified down to a 3 and just barely passed his save, going a d4. The other three all had modified results of 2 or less and were KO’d immediately. Multi-hinder plus multi-attack is a brutal minion sweeper combo when you can get it to go off, and even lieutenants don’t like it much.
Look forward to seeing the next one.
1 Like
I actually caught that mistake in game and corrected it a few minutes later. I am glad you mentioned it because I wasn’t 100% sure if hinder worked on damage saves. You are right multi hinder and multi attack is fantastic on minions.
Are we getting “overcome” correct? I think we are getting it right but there are times they want to do something, and I feel overcome is the default way to resolve these things. Example: Agent Umbra tries to sabotage Panzer while invisible.
Thanks for the feedback!
1 Like
Seemed reasonable to me. Overcomes really are the catch-all action for “can I do this crazy thing?” requests.
Giving the extra gas mask grab to Umbra when he spiked that Overcome was a good move too. Even with bonuses you don’t get a lot of 8+ results where there’s no twist to deal with.
1 Like
Thanks!
Our next game has a pretty complicated super villain battle coming up. There will be lots of boosts and hinders going out. Do you find it troublesome to keep up with multiple effects? The super villain has his own powers like normal, but he can also control the environment so it’s almost like he gets to go twice each round.
1 Like
I find it’s a good idea to make a bunch of markers for mods I expect to see in play, with simple names like (say) “frozen” (for Cold effects) or “dazed” (for getting confused with Banter or zapped by a Suggestion) and fill in the actual value of the mod as its produced, but I’m playing face to face so you might need less prep than I do. Not every mod will apply to every situation (being frozen might not hinder a psionic Overcome, for ex) and technically the entity that applied the mod can choose when to use them, but if you’ve got a lot of them in play it may be a good idea to just ignore that and always apply them at the first chance. Players (and GM NPCs) can also remove a mod with an Overcome or opposed mod (Boosting to counter a penalty) but mostly you only see that when there’s a persistent mod in play.
Your villain a Domain archetype, or maybe a Titan? They can both trigger environment twists, but it does take their action to do so so that keeps it reasonable - they can’t use their other abilities (barring reactions) and still kick the environment into high gear. Depending on what other abilities they have your players may need to be careful to stay on top of keeping the environment minions under control, those abilities where you roll any number of their dice and use that to attack everything but the Domain villain or even just heal him can be game-ending if there are too many minions in play.
Remember that when a villain ability triggers an environment twist the scene tracker doesn’t advance as well, so they can’t speed up the clock - well, unless one of the major environment twists says to advance the tracker, but even then those aren’t repeatable so it’s pretty limited. IIRC the Domain ability lets you pick your e-twist from the current zone or the next one up the GYRO ladder, so you can start throwing Yellow e-twists at them right away if you want. The Titan version is limited to the same zone, I think.
If they wreck the zeppelin (as I expect they will) next session maybe you could do a follow up adventure down the line where the Nazis send this goofball villain from my blog for revenge:
Heinrich there would be at the top of his game in WW2.
1 Like
I am teaching some members of my community the game this week. I will record our “side session” and post it as well. The story will be tied to the current game. The goal will be to bring everyone together to have a full table.
2 Likes
I see the side session is up over on youtube. Now I just need to find a couple of hours to listen to it.
EDIT: Okay, that was pretty great, especially Kid Fury and the ending twist that I will not spoil.
Do you still want a rundown on rules flubs? I hate to do it without invitation at this point, but there were a few, at least one pretty severe.