Hey all,

The event catalog for Gencon 2012 is out, and we are in all of the slots we expected.  Here is the detail for those looking to snag a slot:

August 16th, 1pm - 4 hours, 6 slots (RPG1231705)

August 16th, 8pm - 4 hours, 6 slots (RPG1231712)

August 17th, 1pm - 4 hours, 6 slots (RPG1231714)

August 18th, 1pm - 4 hours, 6 slots (RPG1231715)

August 18th, 8pm - 6 hours, 30 slots (RPG1231724)

The first six sessions are beginner sessions; while they are open to any players, we will be doing character creation at the beginning of each, so it might not be the best session for an experience player to join.  However, if you are looking for a session to join, and you have played before, I can't recommend enough the Saturday night session at 8pm.  As it is listed, that session is open to 30 players - yes, 30 - which will be playing with 5 JMs simultaneously.  We recently finished the plan for how all of the Jumps will interact, and I have to tell you - it is going to be pretty amazing.  So, if you are an experienced player, make time in your schedule Saturday night to join our game.

If you can't do Saturday, and you don't want to join any of the beginner sessions, we will be running impromptu sessions during the week when possible, including a session Wednesday night for anyone who is interested.  So, if you want to play Wednesday night, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know.

So, work it into your schedule, and play Jumpers at Gencon 2012.  And, if you haven't already, download the newest version of the rules, which were just uploaded last week.  With tons of edits and clarifications, and dozens of new pages of JM only content, it is definitely a free download you don't want to miss!

Have fun, and play games,

Josh

Just in time for the core Summer gaming months, but the 2012 update to the Jumpers RPG is finally here!  You can download the rules here right now, but the rest of the site will be updated shortly to the new rules version.

The new version of the rules includes:

• - Major expansion of the JM Section
• - Reorganization of information of Health and Pool
• - Expansion of rules regarding death and damage
• - Expansion of the equipment section
• - Expansion of character creation process
• - Numerous edits throughout
• - Additional artwork added in the JM Section
• - Additional information about the Will Pool and Will Pool draining

This weekend, I ran I game for a pretty experienced group of players, and I have to say... I was not pleased.  Not with the players, and not with the other JM; the fault falls squarely on my shoulders.  That isn't to say the players didn't have a good time - as far as I could tell, they did.  But, I was aware of a ton of issues with my session, and I thought it would be interesting to air them here and discuss what I did and what I should've been doing.

Before going into that, I want to talk about the other JM who ran a Jump during the Session.  She is relatively new to the world of Gamemastering, so she had some trepidations about running a Jump, and then had concerns about the Jump after it was over.  Strangely, I thought the Jump was simple and elegant, and a helluva lot of fun - and the exact opposite of what I ran earlier in the session.  So, let's start with her Jump first, discuss what she was doing right, and then discuss what I was doing wrong.

The Jump itself was very simple - the Party Pops into a lightly wooded area just a few hundred yards from a small, medieval looking town.  On closer inspection, the Party discovers the town is (apparently) an actual medieval town that has been styled like a touristy medieval town, which is being visited by a bunch of folks in modern clothing - although that clothing is not actually modern, but an archaic, home-sewn representation of what these patrons THINK modern clothing would look like.  It was almost like the world existed hundreds of years in the future, and everyone was in costume: some in medieval garb, representing the folks who worked at the faire, and some in 'modern' garb, representing the visitors to that faire.  Very 'Inception', but ultimately very cool.

The big thing about which the new JM was concerned was that one of the members of the Party, while dancing to impress a local patron, lost all of his gear when we Faded.  She was carrying some guilt about Jumping everyone out, and wanted to know if there was such a thing as 'JMs Guilt'.  My response, to both the Jump and the question of 'guilt', are as follows:

Sure, there is such a thing as 'JM guilt'.  It will pass.  You know that sci-fi and fantasy don't work unless there are rules.  And, the number rule of good sci-fi is 'Don't violate your own rules'.  In turn, Rule #1 of Jumping is 'what you are touching comes with you; what you aren't, doesn't'.  And, Rule #2 is 'Jumping is random - you don't know when it is going to happen.'  Allowing the player to make a last grab for his bag as he was fading, or something of the sort, would break Rule #1 and Rule #2 of Jumpers, thus breaking Rule #1 of sci-fi - breaking a grand total of three rules.  That would not have been good.

The thing is, a JM has to be able to separate how the player feels from how the PC feels.  For the most part, the player doesn't care; while it sucks, it's a game, and a good player will typically be cool with it, as long as the JM was following the rules when the player lost their stuff (and the player gets some cool stuff at some point to replace his already lost cool stuff.)  If you had broken one of the rules, or you break one of the rules for someone else in the future, then the player will start to get peeved.  The PC, on the other hand, is a different story.  He is pissed, and probably will be for a while.  Plus, he is going to have to figure out how to deal without all of the cool stuff he had, as well as without some necessities, which could prove interesting.  However, he is keeping those feelings separate, because he is a good player.  As long as you follow the rules, and you are aware of the difference between player and PC, you will be fine.

Additionally, I enjoyed your Jump immensely, for a number of reasons:

1) Mystery.  You didn't reveal anything, really, but you revealed enough to keep us thinking without ever truly 'getting it'.  I love that kind of stuff in Jumpers - as a life-long GM, I love NOT knowing what is going on, but having enough to keep me thinking.

2) Detail.  Yeah, it was based on a place that you knew fairly well.  But, the detail is what really did it.  You had the sounds, the smells, the way everyone talked.  You even had detail of the clothing, and how it was handmade to look modern.  Very neat.

3) Simplicity.  You didn't bog the Jump down with unnecessary detail, or too much fluff.  You kept it simple, and you let us discover at our own pace.  When I run a Jump, 90% of the game is determined, directly or indirectly, by the actions of the players.  Keeping it simple lets the game progress organically, allowing the players to feel they have just that much more control over what is going on.

4) And, the aforementioned 'following the rules'.

As a bit of insight, here is why I thought my Jump (the garbage scow thing) was rubbish (heh):

1) I had a plan, and I veered off course.  While I do improvise a great deal of my game, a general outline is always nice to work from.  I had one, and then for some reason, I scrapped that outline, and moved on to something MUCH more complex.  The original plan was to have a man and a dog as owners of a space scow.  They were moving it through space from point A to point B, and you guys were going to be there for a LONG time (22 days).  That was it - normally, that is all I need.  But, someone said something in your discussions of what was going on (remember, 90% of the game is driven by player decisions), and I said "yeah, let's follow that up and see where it leads."  Unfortunately, it lead to an exceedingly complex history of the scow, the introduction of a mega-corporation, a gun battle, jump suppression.  It was simply too much in comparison to what I had prepared, so it got away from me.

2) It was WAY too long.  I had a whole other Jump I wanted to run, but we spent 2 1/2 hours playing out a Jump that only took 5 hours in game.  Should have been much more concise than it was - too much talk, not enough action (not 'gunfight' action, just 'things happening' action.)

3) Besides everyone being covered in garbage, there was nothing really intriguing.  Again, had something in the original outline, but once I switched ideas, that hook was lost, and I couldn't find anything I found nearly as interesting.

I think the takeaway from this is to always remember the most important element of any game is fun.  Follow the rules, go with the flow, stick to the script - those suggestions are all fine and dandy.  But, none of this matters if the players aren't having fun.  And, in both my and your Jumps, the players did enjoy themselves.  So even though both JMs had concerns about the Session, everything turned out for the best in the end.

Til next time... have fun, and play games,

Josh

This weekend, played in a very large session of Jumpers, with 10 players and 3 available JMs.  Good times were had by all, and I got to try out a few new things I am excited to tell you about.  By the way, I cannot suggest highly enough running a session with a large group and multiple JMs.  Splitting up into smaller groups and having two or three Jumps running at once is just too much fun.  If you have the players and the JMs, give it a shot and tell us how it goes.  And now... the Jumps!

This week, we submitted our official events for Gencon in August, and I can't believe how excited I am already!  For those of you who are interested in playing in one of our sessions, it should be noted the main sessions during the week are going to be designed specifically with the new Jumpers player in mind.  This means all players in these sessions will go through character creation, and an intro jump, as if they had never played the game before.  So, if you have played, the first hour of the session will be concerned with acclimating new players to the system.  Does this mean that experienced players shouldn't sign up for these sessions?  No, of course not - if you want to play Jumpers, I'm not going to stop you.  But, there may be other options at Gencon you find more tantalizing.

First, the regular Jumpers schedule... currently, we are planning on four game sessions during the week at Gencon:

1. Thursday, August 16th  at 1pm
2. Thursday, August 16th at 8pm
3. Friday, August 17th at 1pm
4. Saturday, August 18th at 1pm

These times have not been confirmed by Gencon, but when they are, we will post them again.  However, the times are probably gonna be pretty close to this.  These are the sessions that will be specifically designed for new players.  However, for the experienced players out there, we will have one official session, and one unofficial session, that will be looking for participants.  The unofficial session will be late Wednesday night, August 15th, and will be played based on interest from our players.  If you are interested in playing on Wednesday night, send us a message on Facebook, or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know.  If we have interest from even a few players, we will pull something together and play.

The official session for experienced players will be happening on Saturday night, August 18th, and it is going to be a doozy.  Starting at 8pm, and running until 2am, we will be running a 30-player, 6-8 Jumpmaster Jumpers Mega-Event.  This will be open to any experienced players - meaning anyone who has played before, and has a character already made.  So, because this session is just for experienced players, there will be no character creation at the beginning of the game: you'll Pop right in to the adventure.  The Jumpers crew is designing this massive Jump session right now, and it is shaping up to be an amazingly good time.  So, if you like aliens, demons, Nazis, and the possible destruction of the Multiverse, you should probably make some space in your schedule.  Oh, and we'll be giving away a ton of free Jumpers stuff - so at the very least, come for the game, stay for the swag.

Until then... have fun, and play games,

Josh

Hey all,

Winter War 39 was last weekend, and I completely forgot to post this awesome recap from Ryan, the JM running the sessions at the Con.  Sounds like things went pretty well...

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Overall, things went well with the sessions this weekend. The number of players wasn't high, but the fact that half (3 of 6) were returning players is good. Saturday night, one of my two players had played last year at Winter War (he asked me after today's session if I would save his character sheet for next year...)

Friday night, I started off with 3 players, but a 4th was added right after the initial jump (I just kind of explained things to him real quick-like to get him into the fold).  For the first jump, I tried a different approach...Basically I suppose it could be called "Mars Needs Jumpers"...I've wanted to try something other than the usual first jump (I know the descending event approach is new and original  for the players, but it really isn't for me)...Basically, "meteors" crashed throughout Champaign-Urbana, unleashing "jump-ray" shooting aliens...I started all three beginning players off at different locales, since two of the players had previously jumped.  After one of the players rescuedpeople from a car crash, and another hid in a garbage dumpster, the party jumped to a "dead in the water" spaceship.  After almost attacking each other (great roleplaying from one of the vets and one of the new players) as a result of the mind-influence of the ancient artifacts carried aboard, and having found several dead crew members and a dead jumper aboard, the quartet next found themselves in a Victoria's Secret dressing room in a Columbus, OH area shopping mall in 2002. Following embarassment and ejection from the premeses by mall security, the group wound up going to eat at Perkins (funny how many jumping parties end up going out to eat and looking at newspapers from boxes), while one of the vets went to find some pants at the womens' clothing boutique in the strip mall next door. After jumping, the group then found themselves 100' from the Niagara Falls, with climactic drama and now useless cell phones (and other electronic devices).  After being shot at by bows and arrows from hidden assailants, the Friday night group finished off in New York overrrun by Cthulhu and his minions.

Saturday night's group included one returnee and one new player (a woman who had run her own 'indie' time travel game the previous night).  We started with the "standard", descending lightning initial jump (that the vet played along with well), and went to the good-old standby runaway alien/future train jump to start.  They next went through good-old-standby number 2 jump, the Ford's Theater jump (note: Ryan doesn't include the "other jumpers" mentioned in the 1st edition module in convention jumps, and I would recommend against it as well.  Might be a bit too much going on for a group of strangers in their first jump.)  The pair ended up debating whether to do anything or not for a long time, and then the vet decided to "roll a drunk" he and his partner player saw coming out of the tavern next to the theater in order to get some money (they had donned some period apparel found in costuming in the theater itself).

Next, the pair jumped to what, for me, is now becoming a standard, the Heavy Metal Parking Lot...

Honestly, this had to have been one of my favorite role-play episodes ever at a con.  After being "freed" from a locked semi-trailer parked in the lot, the duo ended up at a Denny's across the street from the arena (at which the Dokken-Judas Priest show would be held).  They then decided to return to the parking lot (thinking something important must be happening there, or at least at the show).  After returning to the parking lot and being asked if they wanted to "buy some shit" by a concert-goer, the vet, thinking something really important must be going on at the concert to justify jumping there (which there really wasn't... thank you sandbox role-playing), proceeded to try to incapacitate the dealer to steal tickets to the show.  After a rather exciting combat sequence between the vet (while the rookie went to "find help" from the police... don't even ask) and some 1980's burn outs, the pair faded out to end things for the night.

All in all, even though there weren't too many players total, things went really well.  Everyone seemed to have a really good time. One thing I liked was that even though I only had two players Saturday, they both still had a great time playing.  Honestly, I was tired and worn out after a day of running miniatures games and wasn't really looking forward to tonight's session, but it was probably my favorite session of running the game so far.

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Looks like Jumpers was a success at Winter War again this year.  We're looking to make a bigger splash at the local Cons this season - we're hoping to be at Codcon and Michicon this year, as well as Diecon, Origins and Gencon.  So, if you have a local Con, and you want Jumpers to represent, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Until next time, have fun and play games,

Josh

Hey all, just a quick reminder that Winter War 39 is this weekend!  We have two sessions of Jumpers going on, so if there slots open, be sure and snatch them up.  We are running a novice session for new players, along with a session for experienced Jumpers, so there is something for everyone.  And, if you want us to come out to your Con, just This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know, and we'll see what we can do.

Speaking of Cons, and games in general, we're looking for folks out there who are running sessions of Jumpers.  If you are playing the game with your group, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - we're looking forward to hearing your stories!

Finally, Ryan put together a great primer for JMs to use with new players.  The 1-page document runs down the high-level basics of Jumpers: how characters work, choosing skills, skill checks and the combat round.  Download it, take a look, and let us know what you think!

We'll have some updates on more Con dates soon, including our plans for Gencon.  This year, we are gonna get a little ridiculous, but I think it'll be a hella good time.

Until then,

Have fun, and play games!

Josh