2010 Team Roleplaying Challenge

2010 Team Roleplaying Challenge: The Blood of Inti

Game System: Cortex System

Description: 1934. The Great Depression. Mobsters, spies and anarchists at home. Fascism, Communism and Militarism abroad. Right now, they’re the least of your worries. You’re more interested in these reports of hidden Incan treasure-cities. And getting out of this Brazilian jail. And which of your fellow prisoners you can trust…

The 2010 Team Roleplaying Challenge is a competition event for teams of 5-6 players. Only the team’s captain should register for this event. Familiarity with the Cortex System is helpful, but not necessary; teams are graded on their roleplaying, not their knowledge of the rules mechanics. Good luck to all teams! Keywords: Teamwork, competition, bragging rights.

Beginner, Characters provided.

Time: 1 slot; Sunday morning February 14^th 2010 at GenghisCon.

5-6 Players per team.

Some of you may have questions…

“Competitive Roleplaying? What’s that about?”

The Team Roleplaying Challenge is an annual tradition at GenghisCon. Most of us regard roleplaying as primarily a cooperative experience. Still, sometimes it’s nice to pit your skills against others and be recognized for being good at it. The goal of the Team Challenge is to give people a chance to show off their roleplaying and teamwork skills. The competition occurs between teams, not between players on the same team.

“A Pulp Team Event? What’s up with that?”

Those of you who’ve been around awhile know that the Team Roleplaying Challenge has traditionally been a D&D event. So why are we changing it this year? Several reasons, actually. For starters, we all feel that D&D 4^th Edition – while an excellent system in many ways– is not really well-suited to what we want to do with the Team Challenge. We considered going back to D&D v3.5, or Pathfinder/v3.75, but that didn’t feel right either, and we didn’t want everyone to have to lug around another complete set of books. And finally, the Guildmasters felt like we needed a break from High Fantasy and it was time to give another genre a shot.

“Yeah, but why Pulp?”

We held a poll on the RP-Artisans Yahoo Group, and Pulp won by a fairly substantial margin. Which is fine with us, as it’s one of our favorite genres!

“But I don’t like Pulp!” / “But I Only Play Fantasy!”

Oh come on – what’s not to love about Pulp? Nazis, ninjas, noir detectives, bold explorers, femmes fatale, wild men, lost worlds, Weird Science, Powers Beyond The Ken Of Mortal Men… and that’s just the PCs! If you’ve never tried Pulp gaming before, we highly recommend you give it a try. If you’re just convinced you’ll hate it, well… sorry, but we can’t please everyone! ;)

“Is this a Serial Pulp game?” / “Can I play my Serial Pulp character?”

No to both questions. While many of us play Serial Pulp & love it, this game will have a slightly different flavor, and the PCs will be written specifically for the scenario.

“OK, so why Cortex System?”

The Guildmasters went `round & round on this one, examining several different game systems to find the one we felt worked best for what we want to do. We specifically limited ourselves to systems that had “Quick Start” guides available as free downloads, so no one would have to buy books just to compete. While there are several excellent systems out there, we chose Cortex for several reasons:

1. The rules mechanics are simple and easy to learn,
2. The system encourages good roleplaying,
3. It captures the feel of the Pulp genre, and lastly
4. Several of the GMs were already familiar with it. (After all, we’re the ones who have to write it & run it!)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cortex, it’s Margaret Weis Productions’ “generic” version of the system used in their Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, and Vampire Hunter RPGs. 90% of the mechanics can be summed up as: roll one die for characteristic and one die for skill and add them together. That’s about it, really.

“So, do you expect everyone to buy/master the Cortex system in order to be competitive?”

Not at all! As with previous Team Events, you’ll be scored on how well you roleplay, not on how much of a rules monkey you are. That’s the main reason we picked a Rules Light system – we wanted something that didn’t have a steep learning curve. Players might find it helpful to download and read through one of the Quick Start documents available from drivethrurpg.com. But honestly, even if you showed up at the table having never heard of Cortex before, I don’t think you’d be at a disadvantage.

“Speaking of scoring – how does that work?”

Glad you asked! The objective of the Team Challenge is to reward players/teams for good roleplaying. But of course “good roleplaying” is a fairly subjective concept. So to maintain some consistency across different GMs, we’ve attempted to create some reasonably objective scoring criteria. Teams are graded based on:

1. Roleplaying the characters as written. If your character is supposed to be “fearless,” you might get points for boldly leading a charge, or lose points for cowering in fear.
2. Roleplaying interactions with PCs and NPCs. If your character is supposed to be in love with another character, you might get points for roleplaying appropriately – especially throwing out “hooks” for your teammates to roleplay off.
3. Story Advancement. You can get points in each encounter for achieving certain plot points, accomplishing certain tasks, etc. Teams that have won in past years tend to be the ones who strike the right balance between “fully roleplaying each encounter” and “getting through the module.”
4. Working together as a Team, both in and out of combat.

“So what does the winning team get?”

Bragging rights! Validation of your roleplaying skills! Your picture on our website! And your team’s ribbon added to the Team Challenge Banner, which your team gets to hold onto for the next 12 months! (What, you expected cash?)

“OK, I’m sold! Now what?”

Put together a team of 5-6 players, ideally people you know and have gamed with before. Once registration for GenghisCon opens, the Team Captain (and ONLY the Captain) should register for the Team Challenge event on the DGA’s website.

“Do we have to have 6 players?”

We’ve listed 5 as the minimum number of players per team. However, there are some scoring points that it may be hard to achieve without all the 6 PCs in play. So we highly recommend 6 players per Team, even if you have to draft someone at Muster!

“I have other questions…”

Please post them to the Yahoo Group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/rp-artisans/) and we’ll do our best to answer it. Good luck!