Let's Run an X-Crawl: Part 2

 

I previously talked about this but I figured it’s good to repeat it here, so here’s the first paragraph of the previous article to explain why/what I’m doing. With the upcoming X Crawl Classic coming to Kickstarter soon I’m pretty excited about new and returning players getting involved. It’s not a secret that X Crawl is in my top three favorite RPGs and I would love for it to succeed. To that end I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to start an X Crawl campaign. I’ve been playing X Crawl for nearly as long as there’s been a game. I played in the first ever Buckeye Crawl at Origins back in… “Zeus am I old.” Anyway, I’ve run a successful multi-year campaign, and several smaller one shots, and demos.

My previous article was advice to help Dungeon Judges (DJ’s) run an X-Crawl and some things they might want to look at to make for a hopefully more unique experience. In this article I’m going to focus on Crawlers. What your players need to know and what might help them as they get ready to play.

The first part of this is going to focus on mechanics. There are two things that get lost in most Crawlers first few game. I’m going to cover those and give them a couple of tips to help remember. After that I’m going to go into some character, atmosphere, and roleplay tips that can be used to help enhance the experience. X-Crawl is one of those amazing games that makes me think different, and I find that it takes some players a couple of sessions to get into the mindset for X-Crawl. I’m hoping these tips help shortcut that.

None of this is mandatory to have a good time, and if your game doesn’t focus on roleplaying or getting into character that’s fine. This game works both as a funhouse dungeon and a roleplay deep dive. However your group has fun is the perfect way to play these are just some tips to help both groups.

 

MECHANICS

Two things in X-Crawl I see new players miss all of the time are Mojo and Grandstanding. Even new DJ’s tend to forget these things and as such players miss out on a couple of bonuses that will help them in the long run.

MOJO

Mojo is the most often beneficial and the one I’m going to look at first. Mojo is a representation of the group’s teamwork. It is the mechanical representation of their long hours of practice, tactical discussions, comradery, and the trust they’ve built up. It’s that little boost of, “You can do it!” that’s found in most team sports.

Every Crawler has their own pool of points that they can pass out to help the other player succeed. Since you have to give them out before the roll player’s tend to forget they have them or they try to bank them for the final encounter. In hopes of not forgetting them I recommend a pile of tokens, poker chips, mini-snickers, or whatever you happen to have around. This gives you a physical thing to handle that should help remind you that you have something to give. Snickers work particularly well here since you can only eat one when you give away the point.

The other problem is banking them until the end. They prefer to hand out as many points for a single roll instead of a series of +1’ and +2’s to help out over several roles. This sounds like a great idea if you can reach the final fight then give the heavy hitters +10 to hit. It’s a guaranteed kill. I’m guilty of this. I’m guilty of both of these.

The problem comes in two parts, first, a high to hit role doesn’t do tons of damage or trigger a critical; it just hits. The other is a role of 1 will empty everyone’s mojo pool setting them all to 0. This makes it really difficult to bank the points to the big encounters.

The other misconception is that the +1 and +2 won’t help that much. While I think this is a more pronounced problem in previous editions, the DCC has a mechanic that makes this a far better option. If you fail a role in X-Crawl Classic then you can spend luck to make the role a success. By giving your teammates the small pluses at the very least you’re saving them a few luck points if they still fail the role.

GRANDSTANDING

Another mechanic that gets forgotten by new players is grandstanding. You get to perform two grandstands in an encounter; one during and one at the end. Grandstanding is that moment when you work the crowd to get them to behind you. If you’ve ever seen professional wrestling you’ll recognize the moment a wrestler starts playing to the crowd. In other sports, it’s the touchdown dance, high five line at the end of a home run, or the golfer’s fist bump after a great shot. Different sports have different levels of allowable excitement. In X-Crawl you’re going more for the wrestling level.

A successful grandstand will affect your fame score. Fame is mostly an out of crawl statistic. You’ll use it more between levels than during and it’s possible to never have to use fame during a crawl. To this end it’s more important to pay attention to fame and grandstanding in an ongoing campaign than a one shot.

However, it’s still a part of the sport and easy to forget. Much like mojo, the best way to remember is to have a physical reminder. If you’re using poker chips for mojo add a different color chip for your grandstand attempt.

Remembering to use it is one thing; using it well is another. You get bonuses on your grandstand check if you choose the right time to try it. Like most sports, grandstanding is best done after something memorable. I’ll not say something good here, which is a more traditional way of looking at it.

“I thought you had to do something good to be famous.”

“Not if you do it colorfully,”

 This is a quote from Major League, a really good baseball movie and worth watching. I use it here because it’s right. In real life we’ve seen the Cleveland Browns get a parade for a perfect season after losing every game. Eddie the Eagle is an Olympic legend after finishing with the lowest ski jump distance in Olympic history by wide margin. Neither of these were good things but they were popular, they had the fans behind them, they got attention.

Pick your moment, scoring a critical hit on the big boss is a great moment to grandstand. So is rolling a natural 1 to jump a pit, tumbling into it, landing on your own vial of alchemist’s fire, setting it off and barely putting the flames, and standing up with a single hit point. It wasn’t good, but it was certainly memorable. You will show up on the highlight reel. Does the clip end with you looking dejected or screaming, “Is that the best you’ve got?” It’s not flying, it’s falling with style.

 

That’s it for the mechanical parts of the article. From here on out I’m going to give a couple of character and roleplay tips I think can build the setting better. If this is where you leave us, thanks for stopping by but, you might want to skim the next part, just too really ratchet up the fun.

 

QUICK AND EASY PERSONAS

This is not my trick. I stole this from Brendan LeSalle. If you’re playing a one-shot and want a quick and easy description for your character think of the actor that will play them in the movie. Any actor, any character, any era. X-Crawl is from a world of magic where resurrection and mystic clones are both available. I use this when running demos and it’s incredibly helpful. I know that in some instances making a character that’s just a carbon copy of a specific character or actor you like is seen as lazy. Honestly, it’s a great short hand and I’m officially giving you permission to do it.

Plus, mixing it up can be fun. It’s just as entertaining to play a Barbarian that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gina Carano but it’s equally fun to play one patterned after Napoleon Dynamite or Velma Dinkley.

Beyond that you’ll want to decide if your team is white hats or heels. These are wresting terms that apply here in X-Crawl very well. White Hats are crawlers who try to show a more heroic side while Heels fight dirty and are generally considered the “bad” guys.

What stance your team takes doesn’t affect your characters overall personality. One of the best character concepts I remember from the early days of X-Crawl was someone from the forums who played Captain Howdy. The Captain was a White Hat; beloved by children and families. Behind the scenes he was a rat bastard. Being a White hat doesn’t make you a hero and a Heel isn’t necessarily a villain. Hell, the Rock was a Heel; and I think we’ll all agree he seems a decent fellow.

 

BACKGROUNDS

Why is your character an X-Crawler? One of those old standard questions we ask about gaming is why does your character go on adventures. There’s lots of safer ways to earn money. My first group was filled with the standard fantasy RPG reasons. Regain family honor, a quest for revenge, fame and fortune, and tragic pasts a plenty. These were all fine, but X-Crawl offers a few options we hadn’t thought of.

X-Crawl is one of the few games where we have examples of why people would actually do this. Look at any professional sport and you can see dozens of examples of why people play football, baseball, American football, and pretty much every other sport. You don’t need a long and detailed backstory of searching for your lost sibling who went off to adventure and disappeared. If you had a sibling do that, you know exactly what happened to them, you probably watched it on a big screen TV in full color with surround sound.

Here perfectly decent and reasonable backgrounds are you got a college scholarship, loved the sports as a kid, getting out of the projects, and dozens of others. Heck, if you’re playing a messenger then you have a built in background.

Messengers are the X-Crawl clerics. As a messenger your background is you were doing your life when a God appeared before you, informed you that you are the descendant of one of their many children, and demanded that you go forth and bring honor to their name in the sport of X-Crawl. Doesn’t matter what you used to do; police officer, soldier, accountant, or fast food worked; you’re a professional athlete now. I mean, you could say no…I’m sure the Gods will understand…there are tons of stories about how people told them no and absolutely nothing bad happened because of it…

 

TEAM NAME

What your team is called is one of those things I watch people stumble on. In most groups I’ve run, this includes one shots and campaigns, there’s a brain freeze when you ask for team names. There are two places to look, the first is professional sports. City and a mascot and you’ve got a team. This is a popular convention that’s worked well for a while. A quick method for this is use the city you’re all from and pick a mascot that you can all agree on. If you’ve got something local that fits in go with that. It doesn’t have to be fantasy based or fictional. A perfect example is the Sell Swords, an in universe team that’s featured in a lot of the art.

The other example for this is E-Sports. In fact, I’d recommend looking at E-Sports for lots of inspiration in X-Crawl. The model for how X-Crawl works and how E-Sports function are very similar. With E-Sports teams you get some fun things. You’ll have stuff like Team Liquid, Zealots, Murlock Book Club, or Fnatic. Sometimes they’re named after their sponsor, Team Red Bull has a thriving E-Sports presence.

I’d even o so far as to say you could widen this to the name of your character. Big K, Dumpster, MFPallytime, and Stormshriek are all E-Sports players. They also all sound like they could be running around in X-Crawl.

 

MOJO

Handing out Mojo is a mechanical, easy to perform action. However, you can always liven it up by describing what you do. A quick, “You got this,” is more than enough to justify a couple of mojo points. More often than not, that’s all it represents. However, if you’re going to spend a lot of points, I’d say four or more, then try and be a bit more colorful.

If you’re wearing a baseball hat flip it inside out and go full rally cap. Team chants are a good idea. Cool Runnings has that great, “Feel the rhythm…” count down they do when the take off at the start of a race. Quacking in the Mighty Ducks. The Cleveland Browns bark at one another. Baseball players use various handshakes with some players having a special handshake for every member of their team.

 

GRANDSTANDING

Typified more in professional wrestling than any other sport, grandstanding is a great way to ramp the game up. The act of getting the crowd to support you, cheer for you, and rally behind you is an art form in professional wrestling. The great ones get remembered, go on to be famous, and get film and television deals.

When performing a grandstand it’s better to put some effort into it. Have fun with your descriptions. You’ve just critically hit Guntar the Bold, ogre barbarian final boss of Highlands Crawl. He’s still up, he’s angry, and he’s turning to face you. This is a great time to grandstand. You could easily announce a grandstand attempt, roll some dice, and take the result. Or you could call him ugly, scream for the fans to give you their power, and put on a show of getting ramped up by the crowd’s cheers. Sounds silly? Hulk Hogan did it three times a week for years.

A nice subset of this is Cutting a Promo; another wrestling term. Cutting a promo is when a wrestler/crawler films a brief ad where they call out their opponent before the match or gloat afterwards. Calling out is more of a white hat version and gloating more for heels. In my opinion, cutting a promo is a great way to start a session. One of the players should take a moment to talk smack about what they’re about to face off against. Maybe they go after the DJ, a celebrity monster they know will be in the level, or another team taking part in the event.

If you want great examples of promos look up Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and the Rock on YouTube. They’re all masters of it. Also, for DJ’s, check out anything with Mean Gene Okerlund as the poor commentator stuck reacting to the screaming wrestler for a great bit of color you can add to help boost the promos. Giving the Crawlers someone to play off of is great fun.

 

ODDS AND ENDS

A few last little details to think about. These aren’t anything you need in a one-shot and in a campaign they’re nice but not necessary. Even if you use them you don’t really need them for the first dungeon.

Team Colors/Uniforms

Does your team have official colors? Do you guys try and dress in a way that makes you look like a team or do you just wear whatever costumes and gear you want? How you do this can show cohesion, give your team a sense of togetherness, and lets you have that yell. The old give them the Crimson and Gold, for the Blue and Green, or Orange Black pride. If not, then what do you wear and how does it look? You’re athletes, what’s your number? What goes on your jacket, jersey, or next to your name in the program?

Theme Song

What’s the song that plays when you hit the field as a team? What’s your characters personal theme? Every wrestler has a song that plays as they run to the ring. The song you pick gives you a vibe that you’re setting. Choose a song that sets the tempo for your character and team. Hulk Hogan comes out to Real American, Rick Vaughn comes to the mound to Wild Thing, and the Superbowl Shuffle for the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Songs can be great fun to set a theme. Are you a messenger/paladin of Zeus; Thunderstruck. A brawler who specializes in tridents; Wipeout. A country music based jammer who plays a fiddle; Thank Gods I’m a Country Boy. An athlete who specializes in bare-hands combat; Eye of the Tiger. I could do this all day.

Front Man

Who’s you teams Freddie Mercury, Wayne Gretzky, Joan Jett, or Mia Hamm? One of you will stand out from the others. You’re who the DJ’s will talk to, the media will favor, and the fans will swoon over. You’ll also be the one hounded by paparazzi, stalked, and blamed. A spectacular win and you lead your team to victory. A brutal loss and you’ll be a dismal failure who should be replaced. It’s a two edged sword and one of you will probably have to bear it.

It’ll be a bigger part of the campaign if your group focuses on the parts between the crawls but, it doesn’t have to be. If your group doesn’t want to do the out of crawl bits then roll a dice and focus on the levels.

FINAL THOUGHT

As with everything I write about this, these are all thoughts, tips, and suggestions. None of them are required and should only be done if you want to do them. These are here to give you something to think about that hopefully helps enrich your experience with X-Crawl. If you don’t use any of these or come up with better ideas, then those are awesome too.

I hope you enjoy X-Crawl. It’s a great game and I want more people to play it. I’m a selfish bastard, I want to hear the stories.

Anyway, I hope this helps. If you have any questions, tips I might have missed, or ideas then please drop them in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thanks. Until next time, Stay safe, be well, and may the Emperors light protect you all.