[Great Ork Gods] Sci-Fi Mayhem

[Neylana]

I posted this on Jack's feedback forum, but I'll post it here for everyone's enjoyment.

Yesterday, I ran Great Ork Gods for my usual gaming group. Player lowdown:

Donald Edwards: My dad. Computer Programmer. Used to play D&D and some online games about 20 years or so ago. Has since played about a year of Changeling, and a smattering of other games with our troupe. Currently running a Rifts campaign. Very analytical, but has the sense of humor of a coyote.

Katherin Edwards: Mom. Stay-at-home type. Not too sure about her ancient history with RPGs, but she's also played a year of Changeline and a smattering of other RPGs with our troupe. Tends to learn slowly.

Moon Hawk-Watches: Fiction writer and veteran. Used to be in the SCA. Not much experience beyond our troupe, but very creative and willing to add details. Also opinionated.

Karen Sanders: Moon's girlfriend. Stay-at-home type. No RPG experience before our troupe got together and dragged her into the games because she was there and interested. Still uncertain of what she can and should be doing in games. Tends to follow others' lead.

Rhiannon Edwards: Me. The youngest of the group. Also the GM of this particular night of gaming. Yeah, I game with my family. Your point? About to get a job in a friend's new gaming store, I've probably got the longest gaming record in the group at 5 years. I'm also the most familiar with a wide variety of games and systems.


As a twist, I decided that this game of Great Ork Gods was to be sci-fi (envisioning Ork trying to shoot laser rifles and such), thus I used the scenario in the book, but adapted it to a space station during a major celebration. People everywhere, chaos ensued. After the game, I had everyone write a paragraph synopsis of impressions, feelings, and favorite moments... Here's what they had to say:

Moon Hawk-Watches: "Interesting... FUN!! Simple character construction gives more flexibility to players, but puts more responsibility on GM to decide what is, isn't, possible to characters.
Action Turn - Be more specific in separating 'God declared difficulty' from 'Spite play'... i.e., when player takes action, difficulty of action ('God declared') needs to be more specifically determined by character's inherent capacity...
STRESS MORE 'Spite assignment'
Pretty straightforward..."

Donald Edwards: "A bunch of Orks wandering around a space station fighting with elves, dwarves, halflings, and humans is a bit of a trip.
Need to create some benefit for using spite.
Another player's character was bribing goblins, which was fun to watch."

Katherin Edwards: "This game has easy character generation.
Game Master must have good imagination to keep it interesting.
Much like D&D but with options for many styles of genre.
Best moment was utilizing the goblins and the limited brain mentality."

Karen Sanders: "This game was fun and easy to follow even by me who is a very inexperienced player.
The goblins were fun to tease, fairly good tools, and unthreatening. I really enjoyed it."

Me: For a good chunk of the game, some of the players where basing the difficulty of their Gods' rolls on whether they wanted the person to succeed. Since the players were mostly working together (much less snarky than most games I've read about), this inevitably made rolls easy, so less character death. Very little Spite got spent. After talking to them about the God chosen difficulty during a break, they figured it out and chose for seeming complexity of task.
I really enjoyed running the goblins and adding personality to them. I had the players giggling with my goblin voices, and loved the looks on their faces when they found that goblins had gotten into the engineering room and took out all power to the station. That's when Katherin's character started bribing the goblins with glow sticks (raver goblins) since she couldn't figure out how to use them without busting them open and sending glow stuff all over the place (yes, her ork spent most of the game glowing).

All in all, about 8 hours of silly voices, smacking things around, throwing furniture, fleeing humans, killing guards and general orky fun.

[Valamir]

Since the players were mostly working together (much less snarky than most games I've read about), this inevitably made rolls easy, so less character death. Very little Spite got spent.

How much emphasis did you give to Oog indicating the "winner" of the game, and the way in which Oog was earned in the game.

I ask based on your Dad's remark about a benefit for using spite.  The benefit is hosing your competition so your ork can wind up with the most Oog and you can win the game.

Was that aspect not emphasized?  Do you think it would make a difference to the more cooperative play of your group?

[Neylana]

I did tell them at the beginning that Oog is what Orks want most, and the general wasy of getting Oog (killing lots of people, loads of destruction, killing the main NPC opposition, killing the girls, anything that might the goblins go 'oooo!'), and informed them of the choice between killing the girls (taking the Oog for yourself), or bringing all the girls back to the Troll (sharing the Oog with everyone)...

Donald was actually seriously thinking about taking the Oog for himself and almost had a chance, but then his character died and everyone else caught up. After that, he figured that if he killed a girl, then one of the other Orks would kill him.

The rest of the group pretty much focused more on the mission than on getting Oog, to the point of, when I reminded them of the other possibility (killing the girls, taking the Oog for themselves) after the game was over, one said "I totally forgot that was an option. Damn!"

I think, if I were to run a second game, they would play differently.

[Neylana]

Another comment from Katherin Edwards (mom):
"Just a little note to say that the game yesterday was interesting as I think there was a lot more decision making left to the players. It is an uncommon and pleasurably disquieting experience."

*leaves out the parts where mom is stroking my GM ego*

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I am fascinated by the family dynamic at work. Based on my experiences with traditional card and board games, it strikes me that a family group playing for the first time tends to be tentative with one another, in terms of winning. The fangs & claws come out either late in the game or nearly immediately in the second game.

If the group's used to more "GM tells me" role-playing, then that would be consistent with an even longer "check it out, try it out," period rather than going for the gusto earlier.

So I suggest simply playing again, and providing a little reminder in the beginning that it's about winning, in just the same sense as Hearts, Backgammon, or Monopoly.

More generally, you should recognize that you are fulfilling a dream of many people here, myself included. Your parents are playing a role-playing game with their children, as a fun and normal family activity.

This is history, people; not the very first example we've seen here, but one of the most complete and the most constructive. Take notes.

Best,
Ron

[quozl]

More generally, you should recognize that you are fulfilling a dream of many people here, myself included. Your parents are playing a role-playing game with their children, as a fun and normal family activity.

This is history, people; not the very first example we've seen here, but one of the most complete and the most constructive. Take notes.

Best,
Ron

I agree and would love it if Neylana or others started a discussion in RPG Theory on how to make RPGs more family-friendly.

[Neylana]

Heck, that year of Changeling that my parents played? That was at a LARP. The only reason my parents played was because I was the Changeling ST, and they like my GMing style. We RP together on a weekly basis if we have time. But then, they were both big geeks already, so it's not like I had to break them arms to get their to try it.

[Jack Aidley]

This interests me. It seems you missed out on the two points I considered central to a game of GOG: assigning difficulties fairly, and competing for Oog as the central aim - and, yet, you still had fun. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that, if any.

Thanks for posting, Rhiannon - Orks in Space... cool.