[Play by Post] Better Angels - No Soul Left Behind

So here’s the deal: the Tabletop RPG Club has made it clear that there’s interest in playing these things around these parts. And I’m having a good time with it. But the purposely limited window of any given game means that there isn’t really scope to run most commercially sold campaigns (or homebrew ones of more than a certain length), and I do kinda want to get a bit of that in as well. And I for one don’t have time for two real-time sessions in a given week. Enter Play by Post.

I am thinking of running the No Soul Left Behind campaign for Better Angels. I would like 3-5 players who ideally can post once every day or maybe two at the outside (obviously holidays and such may interfere, but as a regular thing) and are willing to be in it for the long haul because this style of play is glacially slow. Please post if you’re interested, preferably with a basic concept. Rules can be provided if need be, but I recommend picking it up. It’s a great game. We would play here on the forums (probably in this thread but we could start another one once preliminaries are out of the way), using Obsidian Portal as a repository for things like character sheets, and using a yet-to-be-determined online dice roller (the one I used to use appears to have poofed). Premise, some notes about the mechanics and some questions/notes about character creation are collapsed below to keep this post reasonable in size.

Premise (Better Angels in General and the campaign specifically)

The basic idea behind Better Angels is that every super in the world is possessed by either an angel or a demon (whether the Judeochristian version of such things or something else is up to the GM). Angels make superheros. Demons…can sometimes also make superheroes (the grim, gritty, murderous type), but are most commonly supervillains. Players are generally well-intentioned regular people who have somehow acquired a demonic amulet and been possessed by a demon. And so, to avoid the demon’s powers falling into the hands of someone genuinely awful, they need to balance between placating the demon in their head with acts of “evil” (as showy and ineffectual as possible, preferably) and not sinning so much that the demon is empowered to drag them directly to Hell, as is its goal. The question I’ve generally run into is “so why use the powers at all? Why not just ignore the demon and live as virtuous a life as possible?” Well, obviously, answer one is “because if you do that there’s no game”. But also you’re generally intended to have problems that you need to solve and that you at least don’t think you can solve without your new superpowers. And the demon can turn certain powers on without you asking, also. Just to fuck with you.

No Soul Left Behind’s premise is that you are all people associated with a struggling charter school called Brighter Futures Academy that you need to stay open for some reason. You can be staff, students, volunteers, parents, whoever as long as you have a valid reason to be there on a regular basis and a vested interest in it staying afloat. Brighter Futures is a new charter school in its second year of operation, established in a decaying neighborhood – drugs, gang violence, poverty, etc – with a theoretical mission to provide the local youth with a way into a better life through education and the opportunities it opens. Of course, the thing is, charter schools are private entities and largely unregulated, so there are some potential pitfalls there, and Brighter Futures in particular is not popular with the city mayor because he regards it as a direct insult to his city’s public school system. Brighter Futures’ student body is up to 75% drawn from the local area, funded through school vouchers issued from public money. These vouchers are issued in essentially a lottery system because there are so many applicants. But as it is a private institution, there’s also a smaller cadre of students from wealthier backgrounds (and areas) that attend through tuition paid by their parents – so there’s an inherent economic divide between the two groups. The school is operated by the Channing Education Group, a multi-million dollar corporation that sells educational curricula, textbooks, and classroom furnishings for all grade levels in every state. These materials are overpriced and tend not to actually be of a very high standard of quality, so CEG’s been getting an increasing amount of flack, which they are attempting to deflect by their founding of Brighter Futures. The idea is that if Brighter Futures succeeds to a really visible degree, their reputation will be redeemed. Fortunately for the students, CEG’s materials are not actually in significant use at the school, so who knows, this might work. And if it doesn’t…well, that’s just one of many possible ways this whole thing could fall apart.

You will not start out with your demon. We’ll launch with you going about your daily business as regular humans, and then there is a supervillain attack, and in the process the lot of you (and various other people at the school) will end up with demon amulets. At which point the basic goal is “keep the school open”, but you should also have various other stuff going on in your personal life that could be easily resolved with superpowers…right?

Mechanics

Better Angels is a spin on the One Roll Engine used in games like Godlike, Wild Talents, Reign, Monsters and Other Childish Things, A Dirty World (the most direct inspiration) and I think one or two others. Basically, you combine a pair of relevant stats (hopefully you have a pair) and roll d10s equal to their combined value (up to a max of 10). You are then looking for matched numbers in the results. The value of the number that’s matched (i.e. 2, or 8 or whatever) is the height of the roll. Generally, the quality of the success if that’s relevant. The number of matches (i.e. whether you have a pair, three of a kind, or whatever) is considered the width. This affects things like how fast it happens and how much damage you do. So you get all the important info you need in one roll. Hence the name.

Better Angels’ stats are divided into two primary categories, Strategies (broader, more basic - analogous to attributes in some systems) and Tactics (the specific approaches - not unlike skills in some systems). Half of each are Virtuous, the other half Sinful. The virtuous ones represent the better part of your nature and are what you want to build up to eventually free yourself from the demon and in the meantime keep out of hell…but the sinful ones are what actually fuel your powers. And it’s a lot easier to gain sins than virtues. Moreover, the virtuous and sinful stats are on opposite ends of a sliding scale and so getting a lot of one side or the other will actively eat into your score on the other side. And conflict will slide them around as well, or potentially even remove points altogether. It’s pretty abstract and a lot more fluid than most systems, so it will take some getting used to. But it allows physical, social and intellectual conflict to all be equally impactful and viable, so I think it’s worth it…

Oh, and one more important detail: in Better Angels, everyone plays two characters: their mortal, and the next player’s demon. It’s a bit like the Shadow player in Wraith: The Oblivion, except that demons have more constraints on when they’re active and aren’t required to be quite as explicitly awful to the other players (indeed, you might better achieve your goals by pretending to be their friend). This is known as Screwtaping, in honor of the C.S. Lewis book and character.

Things to think about when coming up with a character

These are some questions the campaign recommends answering about your character:
Any family in the area?

Why do you work in your current job?

If you could do anything for a living, what would you do?

If you had super powers, what person would you be tempted to tell? Who, specifically, would you make sure to hide it from?

If you had unlimited power, what group of people would benefit? Who would suffer under your rule?

To whom do you owe a debt? (Think creatively: it doesn’t just have to be money.)

Who owes you something? What is it?

What’s your pet peeve?

Are you religious?

Superpowers are real and you regularly hear about people who have them. The heroes dispense justice swiftly and on their own terms. The villains take what they want and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Politically, how do you feel about the super-powered?

You need the school to stay open. Why?

It also suggests that you should have someone in your character’s life who they love unconditionally.

Finally: the general tone of the campaign as written is superpowered farce with occasional moments of unexpected drama. But that doesn’t mean the kid gloves are on – deadly combat is deadly combat and Better Angels specifically has a collateral damage mechanic that will see use. Fair warning. People with demons (or angels) are really frigging resilient, though. It’s everyone else you need to worry about.

Very interesting. I had wondered if this would work here, but I wasn’t sure. however my BSG games show that the daily update stuff can work.

Oh man, I’m so excited to see how this plays out. And I love the setting! I’ll have to see the roll mechanic in action to really get a sense of how that works in practice, but I like systems that boil down to one core roll versus a bunch of different kinds of rolls for different situations.

I think I’m probably at capacity between my two groups for the tabletop club at the moment, but I’ll looks forward to watching from the sidelines.

Kinda my reservation. I would love to join, but I also have the one game and BSG.

However I am an easy sell, plus participating is less effort than running one ;)

It’s been my experience that one post every day or two is pretty easy to combine with other stuff - realtime is a lot more of a commitment, hence why I am not trying to do another one of those. Or at least, it is unless you’re trying to compose an entire essay every time. Which I have known some people to do. ;)

[quote=“malkav11, post:5, topic:126751, full:true”] Or at least, it is unless you’re trying to compose an entire essay every time. Which I have known some people to do. ;)
[/quote]

Have you read my BSG threads?

God forbid you ever let anyone else run one that may or may not have done it before.

Hehe, well if you want to run one, just say so. Next one is yours now buddy :P

I read one BSG thread! I can’t remember if it was yours or not.

I’ve run all but one, which I played while @Knightsaber ran it. so… probably :D

So, we have a couple of people that would like to rubberneck and nobody that’s actually interested in playing? That’s disappointing. Is the issue the time commitment? The system? The campaign premise? More than one of the above?

It’s not a big time commitment, honest. That’s why I want to do it this way. And I’d have more commitment required than any individual player. As far as system/premise, I do have other systems and campaigns I’d like to try out that I could pitch if folks would like, but this one is pretty easy to learn, really well written, and should be hilarious.

Hey I said I was an easy sell! I would probably join, I just hesitate. But if we get a few people in, I’d be glad to join.

As far as systems and setting, I’m pretty neutral on any. No strong affinity for any particular system, just would favor a less rolling/ mechanical system for a play by post. Having to do too many die rolls would, I think, grind things down.

I have no idea what this system is like, so this is not meant as a criticism of it ;)

There’s really not too many traditional RPGs with less die rolling than One Roll Engine games. Since, as the name suggests, you derive everything you need to know about the outcome of an action from one roll. Gumshoe (which is used for a couple of the other systems with campaigns I’m interested in) has simpler rolls (just a d6 plus point spend), but I don’t think you’re actually rolling any less often.

Well how about that, truth in advertising right there! What the hell, pencil me in.

Awesome. Now we just need one or two other people. :)

The campaign is written to scale as low as two people, or as high as seven. 3-5’s usually the sweet spot, I find, but we’ll run with 2 if 2 is what we have.

Fine, let’s do this thing! I think the setting sounds like fun, and I’m always game to learn another system. Be gentle on me though as I get into the habit of this :P

Holy cow, I kickstarted this game when it was released. I love Greg Stole’s world and systems. Unknown Armies is awesome.

I still haven’t gotten around to playing Better Angels, so if you still need a player, let me know and I’ll figure out what I need to do.

Three is better than two, so you are absolutely welcome to join us. For that matter, anyone else that feels interested (up to about 5 people, I would say) should feel free until everyone’s finished step one of character creation. At that point we need to lock in who’s playing whose demon (i.e., their Screwtape).

So, as far as character creation goes, what we need going in is a concept (including name), preferably touching on the questions I posed in the OP, and as I said, someone who would have a reason to be at Better Futures Academy on a regular basis and be invested in its survival (probably student, teacher, admin, or other miscellaneous staff but there are other possibilities).

After that, you’ll get to do step one of character creation for your own character. This is basically allocating 20 points to your stats - Tactics cost 1 point, Strategies cost 2, and Specialties cost 2. You get one free point of the Open Strategy because you need it to live, but other than that it’s all on you. And you’ll want to mainly allocate them to Virtuous Strategies and Tactics (with maybe a Specialty or two) because it’s much harder to raise your virtuous stats in play and your demon will be pushing to get your sinister stats up instead. Let me know if you need a copy of the rules, because you’ll want to reference them for details. But keep in mind these values will change during play so you don’t need to get it just right out of the gate. And know that there’s another step with another 20 points to allocate, but we’ll handle that separately because your Screwtape gets to do that. (There are also two steps - one for you, one for your Screwtape - where you pick powers for your demon. But you don’t have one of those at start of play so that will come when you do.)

So there’s the Better Angels core book and the No Souls Left Behind campaign book - do we need both of these to play? I’ll grab one or both and look through your character creation questions to get started. Do you want the questions to the answers posted here, or are these things we should be able to answer when they come up in-game?

You only need the core book. The campaign does have a little bit of player-facing material (new powers, mostly) but I’ll present that stuff when it’s relevant. Everything else is the actual campaign and that’s Secret ™. I’d like the answers posted here, because one of the things the campaign emphasizes is everyone having their own subplots and associated characters, so I’ll need to know that stuff ahead of time.