blood, blood, and more blood

[reverancepavane]

Finally got to run a session of John Wick's Houses of the Blooded. Now this was one game I wanted to get even before I really knew anything about it. Haven't a clue why. Maybe I just liked the name. But as more information came to light, the more I was sure I would grab a copy. And when I did, I found that I absolutely loved the milieu in which it was set. Romance, Revenge, Politics, and Blood. It doesn't get much better than that. We did the sample adventure from the book (which is rather flexible, given the nature of the game system), with a group of indie game fans that get together each Christmas. Everybody had a good time and enjoyed the game. They liked the game system and loved the idea of wagering during risks to determine what was going on. Personally I found the basic game system fine, as was all the little minutia about it (I especially enjoy that disadvantages, such as injuries, don't make things harder for you, but rather give your opponent an opportunity to tag you for increased advantage). However, that being said, I have to admit I found the granularity of the system a bit off-putting, especially once you start wagering. It always seemed that the examples in the book were able to consistently wager far more dice than the players were able or willing to do. Admittedly there were only three players, which is both beneath my threshold for comfortable gamemastering [1], and less than I expect the game was designed for. Things definitely worked a lot better when I doubled the players dice allocations at the very start of the game (in order to increase the number of possible wagers for the initial Wisdom risk), when I saw how measly the player's initial wagers were. I probably should have continued to do so through the game proper. [One player during the post mortem had the interesting suggestion that we combine the wagering system with something like the Dogs in the Vineyard, where players put forward dice to create a wager.] It probably would have helped if there had been a bit more time to immerse the players in the world (one of the things I love about roleplaying and good books is the little things that make a world come to life. Anyway, I love the world of the game and the passion of the Ven, which really speaks to me. Probably at far too low a level. As regards which, it probably didn't help that I got a hefty dose of sysh'venda just over a day earlier, which definitely didn't leave me in a great state for running the game. The Ven are right. It is indeed a most potent poison, leaving one unable to sleep or eat. And the only cure is the very cause. Anyway, I really do recommend grabbing a copy of the PDF of the game, which is available from IPR for the absurdly low sum of USD$5, if for nothing else than to have an interesting read. But if you don't immerse yourself in the world of the Ven at least once, you'll be losing something special. [1] I'm weird in that I enjoy large groups of players, provided I can invest them in the game and in interacting with each other rather than just with myself – my favourite gamemaster memories having 18 (in Paranoia, where three seperate Troubleshooter teams got the same mission alert – and equipment for only one team) and 23 (admittedly that started as a Pendragon game of 6 in a semi-public place, and people drifted in and asked if they could "play the squire" and things kind of expanded – but everybody got deeply into character and we even ended up with an audience of about 8 people, most of whom had never encountered role-playing before, cheering the knights on at the end). But less than 6 and I don't really have much material to work with. With one-on-one (except in character generation and prequel stuff), I'm pretty hopeless (at least compared to other gamemasters of my aquaintaince).

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Sounds intriguing.

Damn this lack of teleport devices...

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

A teleport device would be so convenient. Provided that everybody didn't have one, otherwise the gigs of all our favourite bands would be rather overfull, methinks. Some of my recent experiments with the Mark I teleportation device can be found here. I'm always looking for more test pilots. At the moment I'm not getting much feedback from my normal run of test pilot. I'd definitely welcome the expertise of the infamous Shadow CheeseBane...