Whoa - you've run 3:16 with soldiers off to Iraq? That's pretty damn meta. I would *love* to hear how that went down. No-one better placed than you guys to engage with/tear up the content in that game.

Two AP reports written, which I'll post when I get to a computer that I'm allowed to put a flash-drive in. Probably tonight, once I can get to the CyberZone.

Forewarning: Apparently, I still can't figure out the concept of "summary".

Maybe another game tonight.

At long last! I have made it to Iraq, and now I have my own internet. It's not the very good internet, but it seems to work well enough to chat on message boards (so long as I'm patient)

Without further exposition, the first of several AP reports.
Session 1 of 3:16

Planet Holbein

The Troopers are dropped on the planet by crazy pilot LT Storm. They managed to hold their cookies on the first drop in, so at SGT Sam’s request she takes them out of orbit to try again. The second attempt is more successful, and the squad will have to clean out their helmets as, also at the SGT’s order, their visors were closed so as to avoid having to clean out the crew bay.

Upon landing, they move toward the only landmark visible, an ice mountain not too far from the drop point. Upon reaching it, they begin to investigate a clump of vegetation on the ice. Almost before they’re aware, spiny projectiles begin to fly out of the scrub at them. The Troopers return fire, registering kills but not actually seeing their enemy. When the hostile fire ceases, they clear the clump of vegetation, but find no bodies. The only evidence of any enemy at all is a greenish slime covering the ice, assumed to be the blood of their foes.

They are more cautious as they ascend the mountain, but that only barely saves them as suddenly plants burrow up from the ice all around them. TPR Spaz and CPL Cooper drop grenades immediately as the SGT tries to move to range. The grenades are less effective against the attacking plants than they are against each other, but they quickly kill their attackers. Study reveals that the plants are vine-like, and disappear beneath the surface. The SGT orders his Troopers to dig, hoping to get at the source of this menace.

After some time has passed, they’ve made some progress, but the vines still go deeper. TPR Spaz fires his energy rifle into the ground, creating a hole and lots of steam. SGT Sam, standing outside the hole, orders CPL Cooper to do the same. CPL Cooper is wary of firing his much larger E-Cannon into the ice at his feet, and attempts to reason with the SGT. SGT Sam repeats his order, drawing his sidearm to assist in making his point, at which point TPR Spaz tries to knife the CPL. When the CPL continues his resistance, SGT Sam shoots him, and TPR Spaz drops a grenade at his feet, crippling him, and convincing him that it’s safer to shoot the ice than disobey orders.

After tending his wounds, CPL Cooper grudgingly obeys, creating a vast cloud of steam, through which the lurking vines attack once more. This time, more wary of grenades, CPL Cooper tries to move to Near range, and switch weapons, but has a devil of a time, while TPR Spaz gleefully tosses grenades and SGT Sam throws flares to ignite the plants and distract them from their attack. Once the squad has managed to get to optimal range and get properly armed, the plants move rapidly to envelop them, bringing them into close range once more. Finally, they manage to mop up the remainder of the plants, and they discover that the blasting and the recent attack has opened a tunnel into the mountain.

Upon descending, they find at the mountain’s core a vast cavern, at the center of which is a giant brussels sprout, which appears

Good stuff, Lance. So, no scares from the aliens yet. Excellent.

I like it when they get an easy start, actually, because I know an ass-kicking is just around the corner.

Stay safe in the sandbox!

David,

There may have been a tad bit of real-life tensions.. PFC Spier is a young dude and occasionally acts his age. He's also semi-intelligent and is coming up from training that has grown too soft for the conflict it's sending soldiers into. To be honest, if getting shot a few times in a game can help Spier learn that you obey the orders you're given, then maybe 3:16 will one day save his life.

Also, the order wasn't necessarily bad. It wasn't necessarily good. I was willing to let either one of them be right, depending on who won the conflict. In the end though, in 3:16 as in life, you obey the orders you're given, especially in a situation where there may be enemy lurking nearby, or you reap the consequences.

Ya like that I displayed the player's ranks along with the character's ranks, do ya? That was entirely on purpose, yanno. I don't actually own carry, but I do have Black Cadillacs, which will end up on the table at some point. Still, there've been some kind offers made, so it's not impossible that a copy of carry won't make it's way out here.

If this post doesn't give me grief, I'll post up Session 2 immediately after.

(Okay, this is time 4 trying to post this... Session 2 will be up tomorrow!)

Session 3 of 3:16

Caravaggio Caverns, Planet Bosch

Once the squad recovered from the radiation poisoning that LT Sam found out was a result of Protocol Alpha, which degraded their armor environmental systems, they found that they’d been re-routed back to Bosch. Shortly after Cougar squad had blown the Caravaggio, they’d picked up a TEF distress beacon from the site of the destroyed ship. The remnants of Scorpion Plt. (redubbed Cougar Plt.) which amounted to a full-strength squad (with about 5-6 NPC Troopers) was sent in to investigate.

Shortly after arriving on planet and securing the site, they discovered that the beacon signal was coming from about half a mile underground. They found caverns extending beneath the wreckage, and went in to investigate. The point team came under warning fire, and as LT Sam brought the rest up to reinforce, A voice comes over the radio, telling them to turn back. When they get no good explanation, they assault the enemy position. After brief hesitation upon finding out that the “enemy” appeared to be their fellow Troopers, they attacked and killed the enemy platoon.

Investigating the corpses, they were somewhat perturbed to find that they were not animate corpses, but (previously) living, breathing TEF Troopers. LT Sam declared that they must be somehow possessed or mind-controlled. Meanwhile, CPL Spaz saw a strange, glowing crystalline creature flitting around a corner, and darted off to investigate, despite the LT’s order to return. When he lost the creature and the squad caught up, the LT demanded proof of who he was. So CPL Spaz chucked a grenade at them, which caused the squad to return fire. Spaz was injured, but did not return fire, so the LT ordered ceasefire, and sent SGT Savage (NPC) to identify him. Then LT Sam questioned him as to whether or not Spaz heard his order to return. Spaz lied; the LT caught the lie, and shot him. Trooper Cooper joined in on the fun, shooting too. Eventually, it came down to CPL Spaz giving up the fight, crippled with his armor shot to shit. (TPR Cooper was going to use a Strength if Spaz didn’t give up, calling it first so Spaz lost the option)

Finally back under the LT’s control, Cougar Plt. descended further, finding a lone Trooper waiting for them. A brief discussion ensued, wherein the “enemy” LT tells them to turn back, that there is no threat on the planet, and that the Troopers there are prepared to fight to protect the harmless inhabitants. Eventually an agreement is reached where LT Sam goes down with CPL Spaz as backup to meet with one of the creatures. The LT acts as interpreter at the meeting with the ethereal crystalline creature. LT Sam pretends to be persuaded to return and lie about their findings, until he’s back to his Troopers. Then they open fire on their escort, and assault into the main cavern, where they come under attack from the main body of corrupt troopers. They’re taking some major hits, and eventually TPR Cooper flashes back to his days where he was joining a gang… (yeah, he stole the one from the book) and obliterates the remaining corrupt troopers.. But not before Spaz, hoping for a little more speed, OD’s on combat drugs, and in his altered states eats one of his own grenades, greymatter ensuing.

LT Sam realizes that his battered Plt. may not survive another conflict with an unknown number of remaining troopers. He orders the Plt. to retreat back to the surface, and calls in an E-vac, destroying the fragile cavern system and pulling the platoon out.

We didn’t end up doing the session end stuff yet, as it got late, and it wasn’t likely we’d have the whole group together again until Iraq (which turned out to be false, but we played Zombie Cinema for our next game anyway).

This brings a question for Gregor. The question came up if a PC used a Strength in a PC -vs- PC conflict, could he narrate the deaths of the other PCs? I re-read the rules, but didn't find anything explicit. What finally decided me was some text in the GM advice section: Don't go easy on them. Don't be afraid to kill off a PC. So I said yes, yes he could. Does this match your intention of how it should work?

Posted By: WolfeThe question came up if a PC used a Strength in a PC -vs- PC conflict, could he narrate the deaths of the other PCs? I re-read the rules, but didn't find anything explicit. What finally decided me was some text in the GM advice section: Don't go easy on them. Don't be afraid to kill off a PC. So I said yes, yes he could. Does this match your intention of how it should work?

Yes, that seems OK to me.

I would do the following: if someone uses a Strength against other PCs then all the targets take a Wound and the Strength ends the encounter/conflict at hand as decided by the user of the Strength. If someone is already Crippled then this kills them, unless they can respond with a Weakness and lose on their own terms. It's one of the subtle advantages of a Weakness over a Strength, since a Strength cannot be used in response to a Strength.

I would only let a Strength be used to flat out kill a PC from Healthy only if no one objected. I presume they would object, but there are probably circumstances where it might be to your advantage to let a PC die and get a Replacement.

Session 1 of Zombie Cinema

Army of the Dead: When the Dead Come Marching Home

Cast (in order of appearance)
Navy Lieutenant Todd : SGT Monty Horton
Private Blossom: SSG Lance Allen
Private E-2 Bro : PFC Shawn Kopp
Second Lieutenant <name> : PFC Spier
Staff Sergeant Smith : PFC Sarah Schram
Zombie Specialist : Some Guy in Uniform
Other Zombies : Some Other People in Uniform

Summary: A chemical alarm goes off at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. Those who don their protective masks in time, and take the proper precautions appear to be the only ones unaffected, consisting of a couple medical personnel, and members of an unspecified Special Troops Battalion. They manage to fight off the early appearances and head for the motor pool, where they barely manage to get into an armored humvee before the mob overwhelms them. They speed out of Camp Buehring, hoping to make it to the range where units had been firing that day, but on the way they get a fuel leak, and are required to walk. They’re attacked by several zombies, including a zombie camel. The officers die first and the survivors make it back to the vehicle and effect emergency repairs before being overwhelmed while arguing about whether to continue to the range or make for the nearest airfield. Zombies smash into the vehicle, and night falls as the last survivors of Camp Buehring die.

Some comments on the setting and cast: Maybe military members played by military members aren’t the best choice for a cast. We had almost no conflicts early on in the game though I kept hammering that it was necessary to advance on the board. Everyone tended to fall into the chain of command, and our conflicts, in the beginning, were deliberately done for game purposes moreso than for story purposes. Once we lost the officers and had an opportunity to test against the zombies, we ended up with another inter-character conflict ending in a tie, and the zombies ate all survivors.

Standard zombie tropes: I was hammering on my character’s naïveté the whole first half of the game. She kept wanting to help the victims, because that’s what medics do, which led to her and SSG Smith being isolated from the rest of the group in the first zombie attack. We never did end up trapped in a building with zombies all around us, instead we ended up in a vehicle on the run from them.

New Zombie behaviors: Early in the game, the narrator tried to have the zombies overturning vehicles in the motor pool, but it was vetoed by a call to the board. Later, once we’d reached the appropriate phase, the zombies began running. A little later, they were observed disabling vehicles. Next, they revealed that they were smart enough to hide until we wandered close, when a camel herder and his zombie camel came out of the sand. Finally, just before the first deaths, we found out that they had rudimentary communication skills, when one screamed to summon the rest of the zombie horde to attack us.

Player Comments: It was believed that cohesive behaviors early in the game should be rewarded somehow with an ability to move up the board. I pointed out at the time that inter-character conflicts were usually what drove the early part of the story in zombie movies Since then, I’ve considered that there are some other movies where they are cohesive in the beginning, and mid-late game is when personalities begin to clash and people start dying.

Personal Observations: Other than the 5-minute demo, this is the first time I’ve played it. Specific rules were unclear at first, and I did have to scan the rules on several occasions before I clarified it. Some questions came up after the game about zombie conflicts that never happened during game, so I’m still not 100% sure on how those work. Everyone said that it was fun, though, and I also had a good time. I did keep having to stop myself from taking on a GMish role, though.

Thanks for playing my game! Military environment is tricky for Zombie Cinema, as the players have to be willing to go all out and antagonize each other's characters. This gets easier when you realize that the matter of conflict can be very minor - essentially, any interaction between the characters can be seen as a conflict. Instead of discussing whether plan A or plan B would be better, put it to conflict and narrate how one of the character browbeats the other into going with his preferred plan. Going down on the board doesn't have to represent any sort of real problem or disability, it's all just symbolic of the fact that the character's star is descending in terms of victorious protagonism.

I like the way you used the board, very intricate play on that side of the rules - the groups that utilize the board heavily and get constructive with the veto powers are relatively rare, so it's always interesting to hear about that sort of play.

As for cohesion, the game does model it, although it does not reward it. Nobody does die until late mid-game (actually, the very end), after all, unless you have conflicts. So being cohesive and avoiding conflict is a great way of improving your chances of survival in the early game on the expense of the overall survival rate of the whole group in the long term. Long term survival of the group is best served by energetic, but one-sided conflicting - have a conflict each turn with everybody else against one character, and you'll progress quickly on average. This doesn't make sense from any in-setting simulative viewpoint, but it is the large-scale accompaniment to the small-scale notion that in this game, the boring characters get eaten by the zombies; take two groups of characters where one works in perfect syncronization and the other has all sorts of internal conflict - the first one is going to get eaten by the zombies, and rightfully so, as they're all boring, not at all like the dramaful guys in the other box who get at each other's throats like soap opera stars. Entertain or die is the motto here.

So, we finally got some indie gaming done in Iraq. Yay!

We tried to get another game of Zombie Cinema played once before, but crap came up repeatedly during the setup of the session, so it fell apart. Instead, we got in another session of 3:16. I was strongly tempted to give Cell Gamma a try, see what happened with this group, but I'd already said 3:16, and I hadn't quite finished reading Cell Gamma. I'm also going to brush up on ReCoil, and propose that as a pickup game one of these nights.

Anyhow, to this last session of 3:16.

I started the session with Lieutenant Sam in his office, going over some paperwork. He decided he was looking into reports of why his platoon was going through so much toilet paper. I had his platoon sergeant present, who proposed the theory that they were simply full of shit. LT Sam took this possibility under advisement, and sent his platoon sergeant to go let his platoon know the final time of their pending inspection. Much to his dismay, as soon as his platoon sergeant left, he was visited by LT Shemwell, 3rd platoon's platoon leader. LT Shemwell is known to be a decent officer, but he's.. well, he's clingy. He hung around making small talk for half an hour despite the many veiled hints to get lost from LT Sam. Finally, Sam managed to get rid of him, in time to go conduct his inspection.

He called together his squad leaders, and told his first squad leader, an NPC to pick 6 Troopers at random to inspect. Half of those 6 failed the inspection, necessitating a 100% inspection at 2 am. TPRs Ben (the replacement PC created by PFC Kopp) and Scarlett (played by PFC Schram) were less than pleased, even with their cheerful, friendly new NPC squad leader, SGT Tote there to help them prepare.

Fast forward a few days to the briefing. LT Sam gets the brief from the company commander, this one a completely straightforward bugkilling mission. The planet Kandinski was a highly mountainous one, its inhabitants difficult to see from their orbital scans, as they moved quickly. Basic descriptions and planetary conditions were given, and the LT prepared his own brief for his platoon, and it was go time. This time, Sam decided to use his drop pods, meaning LT Storm, his squad's old pilot got to take a break. On their way down, they suddenly started taking fire from the planet's surface, and they were given a mission mid-drop to take out the ground batteries. I took out 1/3rd of the platoon, reporting names and deaths as they happened, before they hit the ground.

Once they hit the ground, LT Sam deployed his troops, and ambushed the batteries. The slaughtered them, but then the cat-like aliens showed their power, and leapt over their heads, fleeing across the terrain. A search showed that the caves they expected to find had been collapsed before the bugs bugged out. They hustled after the fleeing aliens, finding a hasty encampment in a valley. Sam once again set his platoon up, and closed on the enemy. They inflicted heavy losses before once again the aliens leaped away. While they deliberated on this frustrating lack of direct conflict, they were ambushed by a smaller force, which they wiped out, finally getting a small but decisive victory. They took no serious casualties at all in these three engagements, even amongst the NPC platoon.

During this last engagement, LT Sam and TPR Ben were maneuvered out of the conflict, and TPR Scarlett, who has already been showing herself the hero of this mission was left alone (of the PCs) to finish off the aliens.

They finally find the cave they hoped to, and entered to take the fight to the aliens. Once inside, they found a large cave full of them, military types covering the retreat of obvious civilian cat people. This was the hardest conflict of all (with 6 threat tokens devoted to it) In the cave systems, Sam had finally realized that closing with the aliens was the only way to avoid being totally outmaneuevered, so he closed.. TPR Ben attempted to, but luck wasn't with him, Scarlett stayed at Far range and attempted to snipe at them.. Both were quickly maneuvered out of the fight, leaving Sam with the bulk of the NPCs in his platoon. What followed was a comedy of ineffective exchanges, as they failed time and again, but LT Sam persevered, and managed to take out some of the aliens before realizing that death was imminent. All around him, his platoon was being slaughtered. Eventually, he attempted a dose of combat drugs to improve his performance, but ended up delirious and hallucinating as a bullet in his helmet put him down for the count.

(Mechanically, his drug roll didn't work out, so he used a weakness, describing a drug problem he'd had earlier in life)

When the survivors of his platoon found him, they thought him dead at first. The senior remaining person was badly shaken, thinking that whatever god he worshiped was punishing them, while a smart-mouthed corporal poked at the LT's "corpse". The LT revived just in time for the loner TPR Ben pushing the hysterical sergeant over the line, and weapons were raised. The Sergeant initiated the fight, but against LT Sam's order, TPR Ben shot first. So LT Sam shot him, destroying what remained of his armor. It was too late; the SGT was down and dead. TPR Ben was given the option to survive, but apparently his blood was up, and he shot the LT. The LT shot back, sending TPR Ben winging after the recently dispatched sergeant.

At this point, 5 Troopers of Cougar Platoon remained, including the PCs Sam and Scarlett. They called it a wash, and retreated back to their drop pods, and called for recovery.

Posted By: Wolfe

Also, I was using a tool I developed. It will randomly generate up to 100 (an arbitrary number) NPC troopers. There are over 65000 names, and almost 500 reputations. With the stroke of a button, it will generate them. With another key-combination, it will roll their dice for success, as well as determine whether or not they take a kill. When you record a death kill for them, it shows them as dead. It's based in Excel, but I'm strongly considering taking the principles and exercising my rusty java skills and creating a program to do it. I can make available the tool that currently exists, and if there is an interest, I'll make available the program once I've gotten around to doing it.

I would really like to see this!

Thanks for the writeups!