Hey Man, well this is Babylon

This weekend’s gaming holds much promise. Starting tonight, I’ll be making my sixth attempt at running a Burning Wheel game. For the past few months, I’ve been running a “meet when we can” adventure campaign set in the Palladium Fantasy setting. Until now we’ve been using the KnownWorld house rules posted elsewhere on this site. However, I realized that as the game progressed, it was being played (at least by me) more and more like Burning Wheel, so I finally made the call: we’re switching. After I ported over all the characters (which was surprisingly simple), tonight we’re giving it our first go.

I am extremely hopeful. This will be my sixth attempt at getting a Burning Wheel game going, each of the priors being stymied by any number of organizational or game-idealogical setbacks. This time, it seems most everyone is on board. Cross your fingers.

Tomorrow night, the gaming continues with my first ever all-girls game night. I know a surprising numbers of lady gamers who rarely, if ever, get a chance to play. I figured this would be a great opportunity to get them together and let them play without dealing with “The Dudes” who usually grace the table, myself excluded. And given my own *ahem* tendencies, I am slightly less part of that latter crowd than most. I’ll be kicking it off with a one-shot of Cannibal Contagion, with the hopes of gauging their individual gaming styles while having a plain old good fun time. It’s my hope that this can be a semi-regular thing, maybe even allowing me to get my feet wet running 4E for the first time.

Also, Mass Effect 2? Fuck. Yeah.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t an original idea of mine by far, but I’ve never seen it written down as such, so I figured I would go ahead and do just that. I’d like to share with you a really simple procedural House Rule I’ve started using in the games I run, regardless of their core rules system. Really there are two house rules here that work hand in hand: “One Cool Thing” and “Bonus Points.”

At the beginning of every session I run, as a form of recap-and-reward, I go around the gaming table and ask each player to tell everyone about One Cool Thing they remember from the last session. Each time a player recounts a moment of the game that centered around one of the player characters,that character’s player gets a Bonus Point of some sort. I picture it kinda like the “Previously on…” montage at the beginning of most serial TV shows. It’s a way to reward awesome moments of game play while recharging the memories of the players, reconnecting them to the events of the previous session, and allowing that player-driven recount to kick-start the current session.

Bonus Points are nothing new: in-game mechanical rewards for being Awesome. Some games have similar points already in place, but many surprisingly don’t. What I do is set up a universal Bonus Point system, which can be applied to just about any game. Below are some examples of how I apply these Bonus Points in the games I’m currently running.

Shadowrun: Bonus Points in Shadowrun work as additional points of Edge, giving the character a few more uses of that oh-so-valuable attribute.

Savage Worlds: In Savage Worlds games, I implement Bonus Points as “super Bennies.” When used, a Bonus Point allows the player to re-roll the test dice, but instead of keeping the better of the two, the new results are added to the old results. Yes, all dice Ace as normal.

Burning Wheel: With Burning Wheel, the Bonus Points are obviously tied into Artha. If a player is called out only once during the One Cool Thing recounts, then they earn a Fate point. If they are called out twice or more, they earn a Persona. If there are four or more players and all of them unanimously agree on a single awesome memory of that player from the last game, then they earn a Deeds point.

D&D 4th Edition: A Bonus Point can be spent at any time to do any one of the following:

1. Gain another Healing Surge
2. Function as another Action Point
3. Re-use an already-used Per-Encounter power

Regardless of system, there’s a catch to Bonus Points: they must be used before the end of the session! Don’t try to horder them up, as they vanish if left unspent.

I am seriously considering the idea of adding a form of follow-up mechanic to the core conflict system (aka the “Showdown” system). B&BoB is most certainly inheriting the core Showdown mechanic from Cannibal Contagion, in which players go around the table throwing down cards and “stepping up” the smack-taking narration until one player wins. Given the greater focus on drama and intense action in this game, I want to introduce a system to allow the losers of a conflict to take the really important battles and push them forward, transforming a horrible defeat into a costly by unexpected victory. I am currently calling this the “Press On” mechanic.

It must first be stated that the option to Press On would only be available in very rare circumstances. Since a core rule of the system is that no single conflict can be attempted twice in the same manner, the ability to actually break that core rule would have to be a special one, and not easily accomplished. My intention is to connect it to the player’s Sign card somehow, allowing “Press ON” combos to be played whenever a related card is played.

Doing this would require me to adjust the “if you can beat it, you must” rule of Showdown card-play. In Cannibal Contagion, there was no way to concede once the cards were dealt; you had to keep playing your cards until you couldn’t play any more. This rule served to further solidify the “Win Big vs Win Now” focus of Showdowns: in other words, don’t start fights you can’t win. Taking away this rule and allowing players to concede mid-Showdown would work pretty well as a companion to the “Stash” mechanics (in which players build a hand of cards they hold onto through the whole game), but it could also make such a mechanic pretty unbalanced.

Anyway, the big question here is how to implement the mechanic at all. One way would be to just extend into another round of a Showdown, but I’m not really fond of that idea, as it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Priming his steed to charge once more into the fray, the grizzled champion grunts, and lowers his lance back into position. The signal flashes, the onslaught begins anew. Like wild beasts fleeing a fire, his foes lurch forth as a disjointed mass. He easily pushes through, whacking their ankles and knees with a precision honed by years of practice and victory. The few unfortunates who do not dodge scream in vexation as his steed tramples their errant feet.

Safely through another crowded intersection, the old man lowers his rubber-tipped cane once more, and steers his power scooter down the sidewalk.