In a fit of madness (and possibly because it's always good to make things as entertaining as possible), I arranged to have our inaugral game of Gregor Hutton's 3:16 recorded via TalkShoe. We were using MapTool for the shared gaming surface, which made things much easier.

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/23290 has the whole audio and RSS for iTunes or whatnot if you want to continue hearing it. http://zamiel.livejournal.com/1157944.html actually contains my notes for things.

Hopefully folks find this stuff interesting. :)

Thanks Gethyn

I really think you should pick some of the stiffer AA equations off the list. If all the PCs have gone FA heavy then I'd pick one of the [Lowest FA + x] options. But then again I'm just mean that way.

:-)

Did you roll the choices randomly or pick them? Ron has said that people should roll randomly from the lists, but I think there can be times I want to give the PCs a tougher challenge if they had a softer planet before.

D'oh. Sorry Zamiel. You're obviously not Gethyn. Sigh.

Whoa, I don't advocate that everyone should always roll for the planet and alien features. I happen to like it better personally, that's all.

Best, Ron

Gregor wrote:
Thanks Gethyn

I really think you should pick some of the stiffer AA equations off the list. If all the PCs have gone FA heavy then I'd pick one of the [Lowest FA + x] options. But then again I'm just mean that way.

:-)

Did you roll the choices randomly or pick them? Ron has said that people should roll randomly from the lists, but I think there can be times I want to give the PCs a tougher challenge if they had a softer planet before.

>D'oh. Sorry Zamiel. You're obviously not Gethyn.

It's OK, I have an arrangement whereby everyone gets to use my name once a year. It works out pretty well most of the time. :)

Meanwhile, back on topic...
Personally I like the randomness, but do a mix of dice and not.
I find that the combinations of planet, alien type and ability in particular are far more surpising and stimulating to the creative juices when generated by dice rather than simply picked. I get combos that 'come out weird', which I then have fun turning into Coolness. I wouldn't get that if I picked 'em out myself.

So far, though, I've tended to use a non-random choice more on the AA level to make sure the difficulty is pitched rightish for the characters.

Gethyn

The latest ep is up over there on http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/23290. Mission #2 starts out with Trooper Koch laid up in the hospital with a concussion and another Trooper coming in with the group, Tpr Medic Susy Jones (the original Koch's RL girlfriend, playing while he recouperated from a headache on my couch). I think her character description could actually be said to be "Kiss Ass." Which was a wonderful counterpoint to Koch's ... The Sergeant and Corporal both felt a little bit better about that sort of thing.

This week's antagonists were giant apes with advanced technology and jetpacks. Jetpacks, man! Monkies with jetpacks! (Full notes for this session are over on my blog at http://zamiel.livejournal.com/1158838.html.

I need to tighten up the orderings of the turns after the rolls; that's just not coming together as well as I'd like, given that the numbers are all there in front of me. Still have to bang on that a bit. And I note with some understanding now that 3 encounters per mission is too few when you really only have one character in the group able to hit the broad side of a barn. Combine a Special Ability that doesn't require a Token burn with two characters whose FA's are under 6 and those Tokens hang out a while there, doing damage as they burn.

Borrowed a line off someone else's game that suggested that whenever the PCs get down to Crippled, an NPC Trooper buys it. This led to, "Davey! It ripped Davey in half!" which will easily be Flashback fodder later.

I'm still loving the speed and smoothness with which 3:16 runs. I really haven't had a game nearly as successful in online contexts. Totally worth every thought about it I've invested. If I can get and keep the Players attentive and focused on the game at hand, I think we'll be getting somewhere.

This coming Saturday will slide away from the open field warfare and the 60's space monkies to a much, much darker place which borrows more heavily from Apocalypse Now and Vietnam than Saturday Morning Cartoons, and the gloves come off that much further.

SOMEONE WILL DIE! Who will it be?

Tune in next week for the continuation of ... The Hellworld Chronicles.

<p>Passingly relatedly, <a href="http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/23290">the latest episode of <strong>The Hellworld Chronicles</strong> is up on the server along with a little blurb explaining why the crew is taking the next week off.</p>  <p>The <em>real</em> reason is that I&#8217;ve got a staff meeting for Anime Weekend Atlanta in the one time slot that Heather, our Real Life Doctor isn&#8217;t on call that weekend, but I like my suggested alternate reasoning better. Far more exciting, anyway.</p>