Adventure! It's pulp-tastic!

[joshua neff]

The diabolical Sean Demory ran White Wolf's Adventure! for my group & me last night. It was wicked, killer fun. We enjoyed it so much, Sean & I decided to rave about it here.

Rather than give a run-down of what happened & who the characters were, I'll focus on why the game was so enjoyable.

First of all, Sean & I are both huge geeky fans of the pulps & movie serials. (I'm also hugely geeky about old comic strips, like Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Thimble Theater, & Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy. And golden age superheroes.) It helped that all of the players, besides Sean & me, also really go into the high spirits of pulp cliffhangers. Witty lines were tossed off, PCs rushed into danger without a second thought, & everyone was dashing & strange.

Second, the mechanics for Adventure! are fantastic. Head & shoulders above anything White Wolf has done before. PC protagonism is encouraged & rewarded. Two Players gave their characters the Background of "Nemesis"--& bang! Sean's scenario suddenly had the appearance of the two villains (which, as far as I know, Sean hadn't planned to have in that session). All PCs have a stat called Inspiration, which is used in-game (Inspiration is what makes characters Heroes & Villains, & it's all rationalized by White Wolf's setting), but even more so it's used out-of-game for Players to use Author & Director power. (At one point I blew 3 Inspiration points to ensure there were 3 parachutes in the cockpit of the burning plane we were in.) Heroic actions, especially ones in which you use Inspiration points, are rewarded with PCs getting more Inspiration. (You do something cool, you get the ability to do more cool things.)

Now, Sean did expand the rules for the awarding of Inspiration points. In the text, the rules for awarding Inspiration are more conservative than Sean. ("I give them out like candy.") For example, if you toss off a witty quip, Sean gives you a point (which isn't a rule in the book). I can't say it made it more enjoyable, as I've only ever played Adventure! with Sean. But it makes sense to me, & that's how I'd run it, too.

If I sound like a frothy 12 year old, it's because this kind of game pushes all the right gee-whiz buttons. It's why I started gaming in the first place--for this kind of session. It was one of the best gaming sessions I've ever had.

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Glad to hear it went well. =)

Yup, Inspiration is a rare thing, in the rules as written. Typically, characters might only get a couple of points each session, but really unlikely coincidences can cost 5 or more. So, good choice there.

Did you find character generation to be difficult? I found the 'layers' of character generation in a previous game of Aberrant really irritated some newbies, which led to me rethinking the WW system. Aberrant and Adventure have quite similar character generation: basic stats, freebie points, hero points.

Joe.

[rabidchyld]

Sean Demory...that name sounds familiar to me for some reason.  

Anyway, expanding inspiration points rules sounds like a really good idea in this instance.  I would do the same thing in the spirit of heroic pulp action play.  The whole point of most of those pulps and serials was that the hero did the most amazing things very impressively, and with clever dialog to boot.  That should be rewarded!

Just from what I've heard of that game it's like playing Ace Rimmer or Lord Flasheart!  

I am curious though, is the combat system the same as in the other White Wolf games?  I haven't actually played it yet.  

I am looking foreward to buying Adventure, though, as well as the other 2 games they have grouped with it..Aberrant and Trilogy(?)  

Melodie

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Melodie,

The combat system is much the same thing in all the WoD games, Trinity, and Adventure. As far as I remember, only the system in Aberrant changes slightly.

As superhero characters can throw cars around, or zap each other with nuclear blasts, damage is 'summarised' with automatic _levels_ aswell as a few dice of damage. Levels of damage are compared to the target's levels of soak, and then the remaining dice of damage are rolled against a standard target number ( I think).

Come to think of it, they did change a few other rules here and there (all target numbers are now 7), so read anything you buy thoroughly. But IMHO, the system developed for the 'Aeoniverse' is quicker and cleaner than the WoD games.

Apologies, Joshua, for taking the thread marginally off topic.

I did think of another question, though. As powers are bought with the _final_ pool of 'character building points', did you find it difficult buying the sort of character you wanted? That is, you might start with a concept of 'masked avenger', run through a few levels of character generation, and then find yourself running out of points when it actually came to construct your concept.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you had on character generation, as I've a post bubbling in my head about easing newbies into games.

Best,

Joe.

[joshua neff]

Two of the Players besides myself were hardened White Wolf gamers (mostly Mage), & the other two had made Mage characters once, & everyone (besides me--I had already made a character months ago) had some difficulty making characters. For some it was the way the attributes were split up, & then the skills below them. For others it was the first set of points, then the bonus points, then the hero points. But we all ended up with cool characters.

I didn't find I had much difficulty making the character I wanted to play. I didn't buy all the psychic knacks I envisioned the character having, but I bought more Inspiration for her, & found I used the Inspiration more than the knacks for the most part (it just fits the character more). But Sean & I talked about the character a lot when I first made her, & we have a fair idea how she'll develop & what she'll eventually become. (If you get the references, she's sort of a cross of Jenny Sparks from Stormwatch/the Authority & Lady Edith of the Invisibles.)

[sdemory]

I'm a vast, vast sucker for Adventure. I've been running pulp off and on for the past seventeen years or so, and Adventure's a really, really nice mechanism for getting my pulp on, as it were.

   I love Inspiration, and I love what it symbolizes. Inspiration's one of the first times I've seen a mainstream game reward players immediately for working within the tenets of the game. Act heroic? Inspiration! Feat of daring to save someone else? Inspiration! Do something incredibly dangerous without using Inspiration? Add some Inspiration to the inspiration you saved!

   To some degree, though, the game presents it as a means  for characters to be rewarded for doing well, which doesn't serve me as well as it could. That's my reading, of course, so I could be vastly off track. However, I've had more luck tossing Inspiration out like candy for doing something particularly clever, in line with one's Inspiration facets or just complimentary to one's own or the party's stories than giving it out in limited drips and drabs. The game works best if people are throwing the Inspiration around with less concern as to where the next hit's coming from.

   The character generation's another very strong point, in my opinion. Most superhero games begin with the hero fully formed. Adventure, on the other hand, allows one to see how the normal Joe becomes a stalwart righter of wrongs. Aberrant uses a similar mechanism but, for some reason, it sticks a little more with me in Adventure.

  The character sheet is daunting, and newbies will easily grow frustrated by the system (lots of names, lots of point lists and the like). I enjoy it, but that's because I start out each character knowing the title of the pulp magazine s/he's in. It's an easy way to pin the character down, and it helps keep the player from straying too far afield from his/her vision.

   One uniquely Adventure "problem" I've found is the power level. Players (especially White Wolf players or refugees) are used to a certain level of play, and seeing characters who have no stats below a 3 or have at least professional-level proficiency in every skill inspires the knee-jerk cry of "Cheat!" However, the game's designed for that level of play. Aberrant felt like a game about people who became superhuman. Adventure's a game about pulp superheroes and it does not apologize for that, nor should it.

   I've found that, if one really thinks about it, one has as much points as one needs to create any character. Inspiration makes up for a vast number of sins, and one can start the game being lucky and grow into being great.

   The combat rules are much cleaner than White Wolf's, in my opinion, and the game as a whole lends itself to a frenetic pace. The designers even acknowledged the fact that some foes should be intrinsically easier to beat than others... their goon rules work very nicely to allow one to mow down cultists, goons and mooks with authority.

   The game isn't for everyone, by any means. Many of the conventions of the pulp era are alien to a number of gamers, and it's an odd fit at best with many. The first group I ran Adventure with was deeply troubled at the fact that the bad guys knew who they were at the end of the first story. Rather than seeing their notoriety as proof that they were doing things well or as a chance for their characters to get into interesting scrapes, the players saw it as a sign that they'd screwed up. So it goes.

   When it works, though... oh, buddy, it works like a charm. Best. Game. Ever.

   Discussion on Background Enhancements and the merit of Nemeses later, after I've sacked out.

Sean

(edited to create paragraph breaks and make the post seem a little less schizophrenic screed-y.)

[sdemory]

Adventure's got a lot of mechanisms to give players more directoral control. In addition to the Inspiration system, Background Enhancements (basically, backgrounds at level 6) go beyond the standard "money, people and stuff" system to give players more of a hand in shaping the game world. Characters can create miraculous, plot-altering devices and mysterious, world-defining lairs with a few points and, at base, make the world more uniquely theirs.
   The Nemesis background is a prime example of how the game makes backgrounds work. If one chooses to have a Nemesis, one creates an archenemy. When the archenemy is in play, the character gains Inspiration, as does the Nemesis. Many players would question the logic of creating a villain who's better off when s/he faces you, but ramping up the Inspiration when the Nemesis is in play inspires players to increase the pitch of play and leap, spring, shoot and soliliquize with a little more vigor. Once again, when it works it's dead on.