Tag Archives: RPG

Free Play: Lazers and Feelings

Last week, we had the option of choosing a game to play. The group I joined was playing Lazers and Feelings, a quickstart SciFi RPG all about using your laser or your feelings to solve all of our problems. I decided it would be fun to play the ship’s engineer, an android named distribution android model R-3 class Double L or D.A.R.3.L.L for short. Darell had a 5 in lasers which meant he was an expert in all things technology and logic. Lasers and Feelings only as one stat which determines how you can interact with the world. If you have a high Laser score like D.A.R.3.L.L, then you want to roll a 5 or lower on a d6 for your action to be successful. The opposite goes for Feelings, in which you would want to roll above your chosen number. The hardest e part about playing Lasers and Feelings was remembering that if you rolled your chosen number (5 for D.A.R.3.L.L), you got to ask the Storyteller one question about the situation.

After the unfortunate comatose state of our former captain, the crew picked up on a distress beacon from a derelict ship. We found no life signs aboard and decided to board through an airlock. I powered up the ship to reveal a bloody mess. The crew appeared to have been massacred by an assailant known to them. We decided it would be a good move to secure the armory to gear up against the threat. While looting the armory for everything we could, the assailant hailed us from the bridge. We negotiated a parlay and prepared for the worst. It turned out that an android spy worked its way on board and was trying to turn the ship into a planet killer. Thanks to our new weapons, we quickly turned the machine into scrap and blew up the ship ourselves.

Lasers and Feelings really shine in its light mechanics. Having only a single number determine how good you are in two opposite fields is a really cool way to build roleplay into the mechanics. Since my character was amazing at mechanics, I found it really fun to roll for feelings hoping that I would get a 6. My weird robot brain would understand humanity a little bit better with each successful roll. Quickstart RPGs like this one are great microcosms for leadership. Each of our characters had the opportunity to guide the crew’s choices and how we handled different situations. Our robot doctor would assess corpses, I would take any engineering concerns. Our security officer and explorer would guide us through the ship, and our science officer would keep us all sane. It was a great experience, and I recommend it to everyone.

Fiasco

In the second and third week of games, we played Fiasco. I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of the game, some of the most fun stories that are told are those of criminals and how their plans go awry, so I was excited to try and have a similar experience. I think one of Fiasco’s strengths is also one of the parts of the game that is hardest to master, that being the improvisational nature of the storytelling, with each scene and the direction of the story being entirely up to the players, with no facilitation from a designated game master. It was difficult to get into the flow of the game, but by the time my group hit the tilt, we seemed to have a pretty good grasp of how it worked.
For Fiasco, the ties to leadership are most prevalent in establishing the scenes in which the game is played. The player needs to take a lot of initiative in crafting their own game world and in establishing the story, there are no real rules for what you can and can’t do within a scene. It’s a very amorphous and free-flowing game, where the players’ choices will control not only the narrative but also the rules to some extent.
For the first week of Fiasco, the important task was to understand how one’s values would come into play over the course of the game. Over the course of the first session, I found more and more that I was allowing myself to play the character and set my own personal values aside. Personally, I am not someone that would engage in sports gambling or other types of acts, and yet I was perfectly fine to play the character of a bookie. I think the important thing to remember in the case of role playing games, like Fiasco, is to allow yourself to separate what you do from yourself because you are playing a character.
During the second week of Fiasco, the “tilt” took place. During the tilt, my character was taken hostage by organized crime. And while the game did not end well for my character from a consequences perspective, the flow of the game was greatly improved and expedited. Overall, my experience was incredibly positive. This is a game that I would recommend for team bonding exercises.