All right,
the convention is over and Burning Presidents had its first run. The group consisted of one player who already knew Covert Ops from reading and three players without any prior knowledge. The System in general they grocked quickly and it flowed really fast. It took us 2 hours 45 Minutes to play through it, including time for rules explanation and character selection. As I only had a 3 hours slot this was perfect.
If you intend to play the adventure please leave this thread now as what follows WILL contain spoilers and ruin the adventure for you. You have been warned!
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As the introduction I chose to have them have the optional beginning. It worked well enough with only the small problem that the players did not think off talking to the gang bangers. The reasoning is understandable: Why would some gang bangers talk to us guys in suits? They dismissed them. So I had to improvise that in the alley was a door that lead to a shipping company for foods and vegetables belonging to Reggie, where they found a calendar entry showing a visit to the farm with some invoices for pumpkins purchased from there.
Stealth was the primary option for this group, they lurked around avoiding patrols. Finally they blew up some farm vehicles near the marijuana fields as a distraction to get everyone out of the main house and then flasbanged Reggie and took him. They where quiet ashamed to find out he was actually helping Foxtrot, that was really great for the game. Not everything is black and white and as it seems. Good twist.
From there I could have done one of the optional scenes and in retrospect I probably should have. Without them It felt a bit too easy from my perspective..
Anyway, off to the compound they went. On the way they asked for a satellite Image of the area and I gave it to them. Again they opted for stealth and where only discovered after they had seen the route and were in the Garage. They did not stick around to fight but instead ran for their vehicle and drove off.
The final scene was absolutely fantastic. They took out the Crew vehicle by shooting out its tiers and forcing me to reroll the drivers check. It crashed and was left behind. However I had one guy still fire a rocket launcher at them, he missed though. They called in reinforcements to take care of the stranded baddies and I allowed this without incident. Having them stop and fight it out with the stranded bad guys would have slowed down the chase. Anyway, the near miss explosion caused the doors of the first truck to open, the furniture came crashing down on them and almost killed the soldier that was standing up through the sun roof shooting. When they saw Dixon they freaked a bit. Now a cliche agent movie scene ensued. The burglar fired his custom grapple gun into the truck and climbed over into it, all while driving on a narrow bridge with a steep chasm underneath. The soldier followed him. They freed Dixon but could not get him off to the agents car. So the soldier climbed over the side of the truck to the drivers cabin, spending a bone not to die while doing so. He ripped the drivers door open, pulled out the driver, jumped into the seat and hit the breaks. The final terrorist tried to flee but the last two agents chased him with their car and with a show of superior firepower got him to surrender.
Fun was had by all so I count this as a success. As a tip: the group should have a driver. My group did not and that almost caused the adventure to fail by having the players crash. That would be anticlimactic. I had to be very easy on the rolls without a Pilot in the group.
However there are some points of critique I want to post here as well.
The Adventure is very much “American”. I had the feeling not all of the players where familiar with the survivalists and militias of the USA, that took away a bit of the impact. The threat was credible enough to pull them in however. The biggest obstacle for me was the lack of some details. The first question they fired at me was “In which city is Dixon?” and I simply had no answer because while reading it, I did not realize that detail was missing. My knowledge of American geography is not great enough to wing such a thing. That was a bit poor prep on my part but for an adventure that is meant to play right out of the box this is a problem. It would be nice to have at least the city there to work from so that international audiences can place it easier.
The Adventure is very linear and the players felt railroaded. While they had enough different choices to obtain information within a location there was only a single place where it could be gotten from. For such a small scale adventure that is fine, but it would be nice when some future offerings would leave some stuff a bit more open. But then they are not meant to be full fledged adventures, so your mileage may vary.
My last gripe is a technical one. The player handout map for the farm says: ”marijuana farm“ right at the top... Overall I feel the map style is not great fit for a modern game but they are very serviceable and do their job.
I am very happy with my purchase as the Burning Presidents is a cool base adventure to get going that has all the pieces a great action spy thriller movie would need and my players enjoyed it. The Information density is just enough to let you game without too much worry about details. But as written a better sense of place might help when it comes to using it right out of the box. Looking forward to the next issue in the series!
Awesome! I'm glad the convention game went well for you.
Militias are also common in Croatia, Germany, Mexico, South America, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Republic of Congo and other places. Really, just about anywhere there have been regular uprisings or major drug activity.
The militias in the U.S. are in about half the states in the union, (Most militias in the U.S. are just weekend gun enthusiasts and non-violent right-wing political activists,) but you usually find the dangerous ones in the most rural regions, such as Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Lake Placid (New York), Idaho, Utah, Oklahoma (This is where most of the drugs go or are born in the United States, it's the drug hub), Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, the Florida Everglades or Okefenokee swamp. Just grab a map and point out a small town.
I wish I had been able to finish my series of articles for adventure design before I lost all the information. It could have helped Bill make the railroad of a fixed adventure seem less of a railroad. Though it sounds to me like the best fix for the information gathering problem would have been a d10 table.
Can you provide visual examples of what you mean about the difference in maps you mentioned?
Hello Ascnet, here in Germany there are no militias even close to what the US has as far as I am aware. The strict weapon laws alone forbid it. Especially the "Survivalist" streak of militias is something I only ever heard in connection with the USA. I guess I tried to make the point for would be buyers that they should be familiar with the US as that is where this adventure works best.
I do not have a US map. Yet. With a bit more prep this would not have been a problem, of course, but as the adventure is meant to be played out of the box I felt I should mention it. I tried to adhere to the product philosophy, only read it once and a half times before running it.
For the map, just look at the top left of the player map on page 6. It says
The Farm
Reggie Calibari´s
Marijuana Farm
However the players do not have the information that it is a drug farm yet. No biggie. Just a detail. But something I had to tear of the printout so the players can discover it on their own :)
Stylewise I just feel they look a bit too "Fantasy Atlas". This is really personal preference.
These maps were made by the mission's author. Typically, maps from authors are chicken-scratches and we have to draw them ourselves (I'm not complaining; it's normal and expected). We didn't have an issue with his maps as-is so used 'em. Maybe for the next one we'll try doing a re-draw with our digital style? We could also consider outsourcing, but then we would need to up the cost of the published mission in an attempt to recuperate costs...
Valid points on the mention of the Marijuana on the player's map :-) We'll try to be more aware of spoilers on the player's maps.
Naming the town/city is a good idea. It's funny none of the players during the few play test sessions we ran asked what city they were in.
The mission is designed to be played in a single session, and is designed to be linear in nature (it was written to these guidelines). This is going to generally be true of most of the missions in the "Short Assignment" line. It's typically going to be like a 3-act play: Setup, Progression, Resolution. Maybe wrap an intro and outtro around it and a few optional GM-tips or plot suggestions. This "Short Assignment" line is designed around a quick read & play model and linear is really going to be expected. They work great for intro games and convention games, but for home use with a regular gaming group a bit of effort might be needed on the part of the GM in order to remove some of the railroading. Suggestions are welcome, and we'd be happy to post suggestions for expanding it.
I don't have the adventure yet and am low on funds.
For German militias, I was thinking of the small Nazi political offshoots, such as neo-Nazis, extremist right-wingers and the sects such as Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands e.V. (HVD). While their use and access to weapons may be limited, they are often into the whole wearing uniforms and calling for overthrow.
Nice after action report. I had a chance to dig into the adventure over coffee this morning. The main thing that came up for me is the marijuana fields ... esp in 2014 with various states passing medicinal and recreational use laws, it seems a little hollow to have reefer madness ...
That in mind, perhaps Reggie is trying to go legit, or is legit and being pushed by the crime family to provide money laundering, or perhaps it is an illegal drug grow operation as written and Reggie is looking at legalization as effectively killing his illegal business / profits, adding an air of additional desperation.
For GMs moving the adventure to new locations, substituting in coca or poppy fields and that first portion of the adventure gets a lot nastier I think.