Updating Seeds of Doom

I’ve updated The Seeds of Doom with a few things I’ve enjoyed in my games lately.

The Seeds of Doom is a one-shot mystery for Monster of the Week. It’s set in a seaside town, which could be anywhere but is based on my home town of Sidmouth in Devon.  I’ve run it a couple of times before and while it’s been okay, there are a few things I can do to improve it based on recent games.

Changes to the mystery

Stealing from ALIEN: I like the random attacks that the creatures make in ALIEN, as it shakes things up. So I’ve added that to the monster attacks in The Seeds of Doom (although I’ve simplified it by given them three attacks instead of six).

Stealing from Brindlewood Bay: I like how Brindlewood Bay uses questions to help set the scene for different locations. So I’ve done that for The Seeds of Doom: ‘What can you see here that shows that the owners enjoyed gardening and were proud of their garden?’

(Yes, I could just ask those questions anyway, but I find the prompts useful and perhaps if I do it enough then it will become a habit.)

Changes to the playbooks

Monster of the Week is ideal for campaign play, but I find the playbooks are over-complicated for a one-shot. So I’ve made a few changes.

Luck: I found that luck as written didn’t work. I imagine it’s a great doom track in campaign play, but I found it didn’t work for a one-shot. So I’ve changed Luck to being a simple re-roll of the dice (rather than an automatic success) and allowed it to refresh following a refreshment scene (stolen refreshment from Lady Blackbird).

Mark luck to re-roll the dice or avoid all harm from an injury. [] You can refresh your luck by having a refreshment scene with another character.  A refreshment scene is a good time to ask questions (in character) so the other player can show off aspects of his or her PC. Refreshment scenes can be flashbacks, too.

Experience: I’ve dropped experience to three boxes from five, so there’s a chance that the PCs may get two chances to level up. I’ve also limited the experience choices to additional moves and higher stats, to keep things simple.

Amending the playbooks: I’ve made a few changes to the playbooks that I’m using:

• Structure: I don’t understand how MotW’s playbooks are ordered. They make no sense to me, so I’ve restructured them by bringing the ‘Getting Started’ section forward in the character sheet.
• Weapons: As I set The Seeds of Doom in England, I’ve removed some heavier weapons and firearms from the playbooks.
• Curated moves: I’ve removed some moves that won’t be appropriate for a one-shot or The Seeds of Doom, so players don’t accidentally choose them.

I’m not using all the playbooks. For example, for The Seeds of Doom I’m not using The Chosen or The Divine as they have a big impact on the game and are better suited for longer form play.

You can see my playbook changes here.

Questions for team start

I will also use a few questions to help form the team, such as:

• Who founded your team?
• Where is your team’s base?
• How are you funded?
• Are you ‘official’ or ‘unofficial’
• If unofficial, what influence do you have to ensure cooperation with officials?

Did it work?

Yes! I recently re-ran The Seeds of Doom and I was happy with all of the changes. We had a great refreshment scene, and the change to luck worked well.

You can download The Seeds of Doom from my Itch.io page—pay-what-you-want.

And my website contains other RPG stuff--scenarios, larps and more.

Monster of the Week again

After a bit of a hiatus since last year, my occasional online RPG group started up again this month, with me running my Monster of the Week one-shot The Seeds of Doom (which I’ve talked about previously here and you can download here).

The game went really well. Neither of my regular players were familiar with MotW (or any PbtA games for that matter), but they took to the playbooks like ducks to water. They chose a Flake and an Initiate. They decided their previous case involved the giant toad of Wigan, which sounded appropriately weird.

Last time I ran MotW I had some problems with the rules in that I wanted to roll for attack - this time I seemed to have overcome that block and was much more comfortable with describing what was going to happen and asking “What do you do?”

The players ran around and investigated the mystery and generally had a good time.

Feedback is good

I did note that the players were a bit too keen to shut down NPCs. I would throw helpful NPCs at them, but more than once they blocked them. That was a bit tricky, as it meant that information I had planned to give them via NPCs I had to manage in a different way.

I did wonder if that’s because players like to think that they’re in control, and aren’t keen on receiving help, but it was a shame as I like to run games with lots of NPCs.

Anyway, I shared my concerns with one of the players between sessions. I don’t know if that helped or whether I adjusted my play accordingly, but the problem seemed to go away in the final session.

Some other thoughts

• Once or twice I suggested that the players imagine that they were in a tv show, and it was okay if not everything was gritty and realistic. Normally when I run a modern-day game (even my Other London games) I try for a more realistic actions-have-consequences style of game - and my players know that. This time, I encouraged my players to be more proactive by making them imagine they were in a tv show and that seemed to work.
• I was a bit worried about them meeting the monster early, but I realised that they were unprepared and it was tougher than they were expecting, so it was fine.
• I still really like the way MotW handles NPC motivations - that worked really well as a simple shorthand for what they would do (often be a victim and need rescuing). MotW does the same thing with locations, but I didn’t find that to be as successful, except where I used the woods as a maze to hide the monster.
• I included a cut scene! Possibly my first. As our heroes were driving their gully sucker up to the lighthouse I cut to a scene showing the monster at the lighthouse menacing some teenagers. I should do that more.
• I bought a new gaming headset that’s much clearer than the old one I was using. However, the over-the-ear cups are so good that I can’t actually hear myself talk through my ears. I can hear myself through bone conduction, but I sound really muffled. That took some getting used to.

More MotW

Happily, both my players enjoyed MotW and would like to play more. So I’ve promised to run another adventure. I need to read up on the in-between moves first though.

But before that I’m running Achtung! Cthulhu which I’m looking forward to.

Monster of the Week

I've previously struggled with Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games. In playing them I've often felt like something is missing, and I haven’t felt confident enough to run them.

Part of that is the terminology. For an old-timer like me, PbtA games are full of weird jargon: moves, holds, agendas, countdowns and so on. Although the books aren't long, they feel intimidating to me because it feels as if there is so much to learn. (And, as I mentioned before, I'm not a great one for reading roleplaying games.)

(As an old school GM, I found this summary on the Trilemma.com site useful.)

But there's lot to love. The rules are very simple when you get down to it, and character generation includes ties and bonds between the PCs.

One of the things that has prevented me from running PbtA games (and I now have a few) is how to prepare for them. Most of my roleplaying is through one-shots at conventions. With only a three or four hour slot, and five or six eager players to entertain, I've tended to fall back into my comfort zone (ie a scenario) that I am comfortable running.

(And yes, I realise that the pressure to put on a good show is entirely self-inflicted. Rightly or wrongly, I see my job is to give the players a good time, and I don't want the players to walk away wishing they hadn't sat down at the table with me. So that tends to inhibit me from experimenting too much.)

And when I've played PbtA games at cons, they tend to be the same - a scenario to be followed, but using the PbtA rules. Which is fine, but I sense isn't getting the best from the system, which is for play to emerge from what the characters want. Unfortunately that requires a whole level of flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants that I haven’t done since I had a weekly group in the 90s.

So although I've read Dungeon World and Urban Shadows and Monsterhearts, I've not felt confident enough to run them as one-shots yet. Not when I know I can run a good game using another system.

But now I have successfully run a PbtA one-shot at a convention, and that was Monster of the Week.

Monster of the Week

I do like my urban fantasy (hence being drawn to Monsterhearts and Urban Shadows) and MotW brings PbtA to the Buffy/BPRD/Ultraviolet/X-Files/Supernatural monster hunters genre.

So here's the elevator pitch for MotW: You're a team of monster hunters.

Several people have told me that MotW is one of the easier PbtA games to run, and certainly one of the things that I liked about is the familiarity of the preparation: a monster with a plan, some NPCs, some locations. Almost a scenario, in fact.

Certainly I felt that MotW was easier to run than other PbtA games I have read. (Although whether that's because MotW is closer to traditional RPGs than other PbtA games, or whether it's because I’m now more familiar with PbtA games as it's the fourth one I've read, I can’t tell.)

Play to find out what happens

In preparing my "scenario" (situation would be a better name) I finally learned what "play to find out what happens" means.

Previously my scenarios have been carefully written out and plotted so that I know how the characters go from A to B to C. (In play there's always lots of improvisation, but I've got a basic structure to fall back on.)

In MotW I decided to let go, and just create a situation with a monster, some bystanders (what MotW calls its NPCs) and places, and a countdown clock for if the players didn't do anything. I didn't try to second guess their actions, I didn't create a cluetrail. I would just see what would happen at the table.

Motivations for everything

One of the things that made it really easy to create a situation for MotW is that monsters, minions, bystanders and locations all have their own motivations. But by motivations, I don’t mean a character’s internal motivation, but their role in the scenario.

Some examples:

• Gossip - to pass on rumours (for bystanders)
• Guardian - to bar a way or protect something (for a minion)
• Breeder - to give birth to, bring forth, or create evil (for a monster)
• Crossroads - to bring people, and things, together (for a location)

I found this very helpful when writing up the situation - it clarified the role that each character/location/minion/monster played. It found it so helpful I’m probably going to use it for other games.

Actual Play

So I brought MotW to GoPlayLeeds in December, and I had four players. One was a PbtA veteran, the others were all new to PbtA.

You can download my scenario, The Seeds of Doom, here.

So how did it go?

I started by letting the players choose what sort of team they wanted to be - they chose a secret society, and one of the players chose The Initiate. The other players chose The Crooked, The Wronged, and The Expert. We worked our way through character generation, all of which went fine.

The game itself was easy to run. The players seemed to enjoy themselves investigating the mystery, and I found the NPC motivations and countdown clock very intuitive to use. (I did sometimes change NPC motivations to suit, but that was fine.)

The only difficulty I had at one point was wanting to roll for the monster to attack - it took me a moment to work out what I needed to say was “the monster lunges towards you - what do you do?” It’s just a different approach.

I gave everyone 3 luck and had them mark 2 experience. That meant some of them levelled up during the game (which was good), but it also gave them too much luck. There didn’t seem to be much downside to spending luck - being “doomed” seemed a bit too abstract for a one-shot. (I had completely forgotten about using luck to bring in someone from their past, but I’m not sure how that would have worked in a one-shot anyway.)

The hunters’ histories didn’t have much impact on play, which was a shame. I was hoping they would feature more as I feel that this part of character generation (like bonds in Dungeon World) is one of PbtA’s strength. But I may be expecting a bit much from a one-shot, as given the time constraints the plot inevitably wins out. Maybe I can make the histories more suited to one-shot play, by perhaps linking them to the scenario (although maybe not this particular scenario).

What would I do differently?

Rather than let the players decide the shape of their team (they picked a secret society), I will suggest that they are members of some sort of official agency. The exact form of that agency I would leave up to them, but having some sort of official authority would have made a few things simpler.

I will remove some of the playbooks. For example, we had The Wronged in play, but the nature of the situation I’d crafted meant that their Prey wasn’t going to feature. Similarly, I failed to weave into the game the various characters created in The Crooked’s background.

I will read each playbook more carefully, and cross out anything that doesn’t suit the scenario. For example, I may delete some of the improvements that are better suited to campaign play (such as picking moves from other playbooks).

I would give each player only two luck, and consider how “doomed” could be made more meaningful in a one-shot.

But that’s about it.

Overall?

Overall, I enjoyed running Monster of the Week. I don’t think it will replace Fate Accelerated as my go-to game tabletop RPG, but it’s easy to run and I’ll run it again.