The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Intermission #3 - Checking in with Rules and Such
- The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Intermission #3 - Checking in with Rules and Such
- Why Am I Checking In?
- Rereading "A Time For Action"
- Rereading "Impending Danger"
- Rereading "Gear Up"
- Rereading "Face the Enemy"
- Credits
The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Intermission #3 - Checking in with Rules and Such
Why Am I Checking In?
In game terms, we have just wrapped up what would be roughly equivalent to our second shot. Solo makes it a bit odder. The first shot being getting out of the mall and dealing with the Apostates + Holy Rollers. The second shot being shutting down Ouroboros and getting a job. The third shot will be dealing with the Knives and their allies. Then we should be at a turning point.
I would say generally the story is going about 70% correctly. We are introducing a few wheels within wheels. We are getting some good — but not locked down in stone — character moments. We have a few allies. A few enemies. Some intrigues but not so many the story is self-burying. Remind me to tell you the time I spent sessions trying to get back to the central intrigue in my first ever solo game. I think we have a good start. A fairly solid start.
But not really a great one. The action is a bit too Tricube Tales — and I say that with love. At this point, most of the action feels like it might have come from Cities Without Number, Cyberpunk 2020, or most other games. It has fights. It has dodges. It just does not quite have the explosive, silly oomph I was wanting.
There are some good moments. Eustace slaughtering the Patel goons before they had a chance to move was campaign establishing. Dodging over the collapsing church floor after taking several hits from the security drones worked well for me. The fight with Weird Arms. Hitomi "hacking" a sentient computer by being friendly to a relatively abused system is the kind of lore that moves worldbuilding forward. Also a lot of simple checks just to find stuff that does not really have any danger associated. Moments where simple talking is plenty. Some of that, maybe a lot of that, was the pneumonia. It is hard to think of exciting things when a set of stairs can wind you for several minutes.
The time has come though to ramp this up a bit. The fight with the Knives is a good start, partially because it challenges a central thesis of the arc: Eustace gets his powers from Soulburn. What does he do against enemies that stop it?
Before I do that, though, I want to take a moment to get a bit into a deeper dive with the rules. Go over the chapters and sections, talk about things I could do better or focus on more.
Rereading "A Time For Action"
"If something can go wrong, roll the dice." [page 60].
I think this is the primary thing I would like to tweak. Each time the dice come out I want a general break down of what actually fails when they fail.
Partially this is on me to focus on the scenes and set-pieces that have more action. Gun turrets. Three groups of smaller goons rather than just a single fight with a single big bad. Timers and explosions.
"Most rolls worthy of a Hero are Critical rolls." [page 64].
This is how I have been playing it but it is good to know. Basic should be largely just be used to do more minor rolls where some failure would be fun. Extreme should be more or less the top tier rolls. I think I got this part down ok.
"When Re-rolling, you take all dice that weren't part of a combination and roll them again." [Emphasis mine, page 68].
This I have been doing incorrectly. I even talked about, somewhere, there being an odd mini-game where sometimes you get two Basics and I wasn't sure if you were supposed to risk one of the Basics but picking up those dice and rerolling, especially in cases where you have Snake Eyes. I will, instead, consider a Basic success as "locked" even if it interferes with rerolls.
"If after making a Re-roll or Free Re-roll you got a better result, you can still choose to go All In." [page 69]
I have not used this but probably should. Eustace is very much an "all in" type of guy.
The next little bit is about extra actions from additional successes. I need to work on this a bit. Partially this, especially: "If you passed a roll with flying colors and one of your friends has failed, you can use any of your extra successes to lend them a hand." [page 73] I think I have generally treated extra successes as extra effect, not extra actions. I should tweak that.
Another tweak I need to figure out more about is Help. I think I have doing that wrong. For instance, a gun does not grant Help. It just allows you to enter into a gun fight. A laptop might grant Help to hacking since it brings your tools to the table. Eustace's blades grant help becuause a fist fight doesn't require blades. I'll pull that in a bit.
Rereading "Impending Danger"
I have a bad feeling this is the one where I am going to be handling stuff a bit wrong. For instance...
"The difference between a normal roll and a dangerous roll is that if you fail a dangerous roll, you don’t face the usual consequences for a failure. Instead, you lose a set amount of Grit depending on the difficulty of the failed roll." [page 81] Then it goes on to list the amount of grit. Basic = 1. Critical = 3. Extreme = 9! Impossible = 12. That's a huge jump from Crit to Extreme but ok. The problem is...
"A Gamble is an extremely risky action or reaction, a wager against all odds that runs the risk of backfiring on the Hero. Gamble rolls can be either Dangerous or normal, but in either case, they carry a threat for you to lose additional Grit." [page 86] And then, on the next page [page 89], "Afterwards, look at the dice: for every Snake Eye you rolled, you lose 1 Grit. When doing this, you only count the left on the table after you decided whether to Re-Roll or go All In, regardless of if they are part of a success or not."
The reason this is wrong is you have Gamble Rolls and you have Dangerous rolls and sometimes Gamble Rolls are dangerous but not always. I have pretty much played every combat as a Gamble when sometimes it would not be. It also clarifies that you do count "snake eyes" [aka, 1s] as a hit even if they are part of a success. I thought so, but wanted to double check.
Gambles broadly come from two sources: very dangerous rolls — it lists two variations of this, playing with fire and taking things too far — and going all in which is a +1 and different from the other "All In".
Healing I have been slighly overcomplicating. You essentially heal all Grit when the character (1) sleeps, (2) catches a break, or (3) the end of a shot. It's a bit more automatic and regular, once again re-inforcing the need for higher amounts of action.
Generally conditions I have been playing correctly, just haven't had much use for them overall. One thing to keep in mind is that several conditions have a kind of mini-game aspect that grants an alternate solution. For instance, "You Look Scared" can be removed by facing your fear. That can be fun to play with.
Rereading "Gear Up"
Don't think it really requires a lot that wasn't already discussed above. Equipment is in four categories: Common [just for flavor], Tools [+1 Help or "grants permission"], Guns [obvious], and Rides [also obvious].
Combat is very focused on guns which makes the Eustace vs Hitomi, Sword vs Gun divide a bit odd. Eustace get +1 Help from his swords. Hitomi does not for her gun. I think I might be slightly running combats wrong but we'll get to it.
One thing I missed was "You can lose gear...when you choose to sacrifice it to gain +1 to a roll that you think is extremely important." [page 99] That's a mechanic, like the "All In" that I haven't used. I sort of have in the storyline with Eustace giving up his jacket to steady Bee's nerves, but not really in a way that would impact the mechanics. I'll keep an eye out for opportunities.
A lot of the other bits about Rides and Cash are slightly not necessary. It looks like the stay in the motel should cost $1 [again, in Outgunned terms, it is more a logarithmic scale than anything]. I covered that by saying "there were credits" but good to know in the future. There's stuff for Black Market [page 111] where everything is $1 cheaper and a Gear Up Scene where you can have a shopping spree montage to replicate the moment in a movie where people get a lot of equipment.
On page 110: "Anyway, it’s hard for a Hero to get their hands on more than 1$ at a time, unless they are robbing a bank or some such thing." That slightly changes how I think of some economy. Probably get $1 for the information snagged from Ouroboros. The other two missions will be $2 and $1 respectively.
That being said, Eustace and Hitomi have a large crate of guns that they can borrow from, but they will have the tag of "easily traceable" which means using them will up the Heat.
Rereading "Face the Enemy"
With the "Impending Danger" reread, I'd say most of how I ran fights "wrongly" might be somewhat fixed (in that I treated Reaction Turns as both Gambles and Dangerous). There are a few other things that I need to note, though, to add some spice. The quick run down would look like...
- [page 115] Quick Action + Full Action per Action Turn. Frankly, I'll probably keep this pretty loose since it's solo play but it's the metric.
- [same page] Instead of Brawn + Fight or Nerves + Shoot you can use other combos to fight back if they make sense. These would still wear down the Grit of the enemy as long as they might "might hurt, tire, discourage, or chase away your enemies..."
- [page 116] Likewise, other skill combos can be used for Reactions as long as they make sense.
- [page 117] Fights can start either Action or Reaction, depending on circumstances. This can make surprise and awareness rolls more useful in some cases.
- [same page] If I get additional successes on Reaction, those can be used to counter attack, to do extra actions, or to block damage from others. Blocking damage requires a full additional success.
One thing I was unsure about was the Brawl vs the Fire Fight. Seems like Brawl is more than a simple "fist fight" metric though it is meant to be for less lethal fights [like bar fights or quick punch ups]. Only roll Action Turns but Actions become Dangerous. I'm not sure if that would fit a lot of fights in "Neon Noir" but stuff like the fight in the cafe could have been a nice place to use them.
For gun fights [which would also include Eustace going blade-heavy] the main two things I need to note are [page 124] if the guns fail they use up a mag and [page 125] firing at an enemy in melee — which happens a lot — it's treated as Gamble against the allies in melee. Hitomi is 100% going to end up shooting Eustace at some point.
When Enemies have a Hot Box as their last Grit then they get one last chance to spend their Adrenaline. I'm not sure if that has come up yet but just to remember.
Finally, for the final part of this re-read: Weakspots are more complicated than I have been playing them. On page 147, there are a list of possible ones on a table. Presumably I could also come up with others in a similar vein. An example of one on the table is "The Enemies aren’t really sharp. You can attack with Focus+Know +1."
That's Enough for Now
That re-read gets me up to page 147 out of roughly 190 pages of rules so most of the way. The remaining bits are stuff like Chases (which I haven't ran even once so re-reading wouldn't make much sense), some more technical campaign development, Plans B, and other elements that will likely become more prominent as we get into the Turning Point and then the main campaign arc kicks up. At the Turning Point I'll probably work a shorter version of this post and go ahead and fill out the Villain and Supporting Character info — Libby is going to get some stats!.
The next re-read I'll go over "Neon Noir" as well just to make sure I am getting that down.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.
Other sources used include:
- Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
- Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
- Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
- Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
- Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.
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