As I've posted before, I tend to see campaign pitches as movie trailers. Here's one for the Dracula Dossier, which is blowing through stretch goal after stretch goal on kickstarter.
In A World....
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
Dresden Accelerated Playtest Thoughts
So thanks to my pal Theron I was able to participate in the Dresden Files Accelerated Playtest. The first session was mostly world-building and character creation, but we did manage to quickly save a bunch of runaways from a Red Court Vampire. (One of the things we decided upon was that this game took place during the Red Court War, because Reds are such great monsters to smite.)
The players were all super-familiar with the books, though none of us had played the Original Flavor Dresden RPG, and we were all new to Fate Accelerated. We came up with an ex-changeling who'd Chosen to be human because the Fae are all jerks, the "Murphy of Houston" (though she's got True Faith), and since the magic system was important to test (and because WIZARD) I made a White Council Wizard. We had fun coming up with the shared backstory and some of the things we're going to face down the line.
In terms of gameplay, we were all new to FAE, but it's pretty simple stuff, though the Dresden patch of it takes some getting used to. But that's why there's playtesting - considering the differences between the original drafts of the Dresden RPG and the awesome RPG that it ended up being, I'm sure that Dresden Accelerated is going to rock.
The players were all super-familiar with the books, though none of us had played the Original Flavor Dresden RPG, and we were all new to Fate Accelerated. We came up with an ex-changeling who'd Chosen to be human because the Fae are all jerks, the "Murphy of Houston" (though she's got True Faith), and since the magic system was important to test (and because WIZARD) I made a White Council Wizard. We had fun coming up with the shared backstory and some of the things we're going to face down the line.
In terms of gameplay, we were all new to FAE, but it's pretty simple stuff, though the Dresden patch of it takes some getting used to. But that's why there's playtesting - considering the differences between the original drafts of the Dresden RPG and the awesome RPG that it ended up being, I'm sure that Dresden Accelerated is going to rock.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
#RPGaDay 31st - Favorite RPG Of All Time
Unfair question. Also, how is this different from the Favorite Game System? I mean, there's probably a "we can use nostalgia to ignore faults in the system" filter or "I didn't like the system but the setting was really cool" filter.
So, like a politician, I will instead answer a question other than the one asked.
Favorite RPG Campaign Of All Time (That I Ran): The campaign where I feel like I was really firing on all cylinders, in terms of plot, pacing, NPCs, foreshadowing, etc, was a Shadowrun game I ran. I'd always loved the setting but didn't care for the system. In fact, when I started the game, I had tried to hack Masterbook rules for the Shadowrun setting. Around the same time I was realizing that the Masterbook magic system was broken, I went to GenCon and actually played a round of Shadowrun. It really helped me figure out the things I was confused with and so, after the third or fourth adventure, we converted the characters to Shadowrun, though I did keep some Masterbook stuff. I added the Action Deck to Shadowrun and I let them keep some advantages they'd bought in MB in Shadowrun.
Long rambling story after the cut....
So, like a politician, I will instead answer a question other than the one asked.
Favorite RPG Campaign Of All Time (That I Ran): The campaign where I feel like I was really firing on all cylinders, in terms of plot, pacing, NPCs, foreshadowing, etc, was a Shadowrun game I ran. I'd always loved the setting but didn't care for the system. In fact, when I started the game, I had tried to hack Masterbook rules for the Shadowrun setting. Around the same time I was realizing that the Masterbook magic system was broken, I went to GenCon and actually played a round of Shadowrun. It really helped me figure out the things I was confused with and so, after the third or fourth adventure, we converted the characters to Shadowrun, though I did keep some Masterbook stuff. I added the Action Deck to Shadowrun and I let them keep some advantages they'd bought in MB in Shadowrun.
Long rambling story after the cut....
Saturday, August 30, 2014
#RPGaDay 30th - Rarest RPG Owned
Shrug. I dunno. I don't own any really rare games, all by themselves. I do have a complete set of (you guessed it) Castle Falkenstein and the Aeon/Trinity lines, which aren't rare individually, but as a set they're a little harder to assemble.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
#RPGaDay 29th - Most Memorable Encounter
A couple spring to mind. I can't decide.
Firstly, back in college, my roommate ran a AD&D campaign that was the Hommlet -> Temple of Elemental Evil -> Giants -> Drow -> Demonweb sequence, but he'd added a lot of side stuff to make it more interesting and more personal. Now, when we first started the campaign, we weren't sure if we'd get enough players, so the DM (Andy) asked me and our other roommate (Bob) to make two characters. I made NightOwl the Half-Elf Fighter/Thief and his brother, Woodstock the Druid. Bob made a wizard whose name I won't attempt to spell and a fighter who was going to be a 1st Ed bard someday and I can't pull his name out of the vaults. But then we got enough people (there were 9 players , I think), so Andy invented a side quest for Woodstock and the bard to go on to get rid of the spares, because we had plenty of PCs. Fast forward through the school year. While we've been fighting the Temple of Elemental Evil, we've also heard rumors about a Linear Guild for our group of PCs, a group called the Nine Hounds of Doom. There's a big battle going on and we discover that the Nine Hounds are on the other side of the hill. So we run over the hill and out of a cloud of smoke walk the Nine Hounds. Andy describes them one by one, and when he gets to the 8th he says "and there's Woodstock and [the Bard Guy]. See you in the fall." Talk about your season ending cliffhangers.
Second, not so much the encounter itself, but the reasons for it all. It was a Champions game set in a mixed Champions/Marvel/DC Universe. We were a bunch of super-heroes defending Houston from the Hellfire Club, Viper, and other assorted bad guys. So anyway, there was this big strangeness going on, with magic and technology surging and waning across the globe. We were investigating and starting to get some of the pieces when we get contacted by.... Doctor Victor Von Doom and Lex Luthor. They tell is they've figured it all out and to fix the problem, they need to stabilize the surges by collecting various magical and high-tech MacGuffins, which was in line with what we had discovered. We ask why they're telling us instead of the Justice League/Avengers/Fantastic Four/etc. They say, more or less "duh, we're Dr Doom and Lex Luthor, they're not going to listen to us.." So we call every super-hero team we know, to pass on the information, but, of course, they're busy fighting the symptoms of the surges, not the causes. So, reluctantly, we agree to help. "What's the first thing we need to get, evil overlords?" With a straight face, the GM tells us that we have to break into the Vatican, steal the Necronomicon, and give it to Doctor Frikkin' Doom.
So yeah, our ragtag group of super-heroes ended up attacking the Vatican, beating the crap out of the Swiss Guard's Super Team, ripping the vault open, and giving the Necronomicon to Doctor Doom.
All because none of the super teams bothered to check their darn voice mail.
Of course, we later all ended up working together with the assorted super-heroes. There were three or four sessions where a couple of us would play our characters and the rest of us would play other supers. Those fights were pretty fun too.
Firstly, back in college, my roommate ran a AD&D campaign that was the Hommlet -> Temple of Elemental Evil -> Giants -> Drow -> Demonweb sequence, but he'd added a lot of side stuff to make it more interesting and more personal. Now, when we first started the campaign, we weren't sure if we'd get enough players, so the DM (Andy) asked me and our other roommate (Bob) to make two characters. I made NightOwl the Half-Elf Fighter/Thief and his brother, Woodstock the Druid. Bob made a wizard whose name I won't attempt to spell and a fighter who was going to be a 1st Ed bard someday and I can't pull his name out of the vaults. But then we got enough people (there were 9 players , I think), so Andy invented a side quest for Woodstock and the bard to go on to get rid of the spares, because we had plenty of PCs. Fast forward through the school year. While we've been fighting the Temple of Elemental Evil, we've also heard rumors about a Linear Guild for our group of PCs, a group called the Nine Hounds of Doom. There's a big battle going on and we discover that the Nine Hounds are on the other side of the hill. So we run over the hill and out of a cloud of smoke walk the Nine Hounds. Andy describes them one by one, and when he gets to the 8th he says "and there's Woodstock and [the Bard Guy]. See you in the fall." Talk about your season ending cliffhangers.
Second, not so much the encounter itself, but the reasons for it all. It was a Champions game set in a mixed Champions/Marvel/DC Universe. We were a bunch of super-heroes defending Houston from the Hellfire Club, Viper, and other assorted bad guys. So anyway, there was this big strangeness going on, with magic and technology surging and waning across the globe. We were investigating and starting to get some of the pieces when we get contacted by.... Doctor Victor Von Doom and Lex Luthor. They tell is they've figured it all out and to fix the problem, they need to stabilize the surges by collecting various magical and high-tech MacGuffins, which was in line with what we had discovered. We ask why they're telling us instead of the Justice League/Avengers/Fantastic Four/etc. They say, more or less "duh, we're Dr Doom and Lex Luthor, they're not going to listen to us.." So we call every super-hero team we know, to pass on the information, but, of course, they're busy fighting the symptoms of the surges, not the causes. So, reluctantly, we agree to help. "What's the first thing we need to get, evil overlords?" With a straight face, the GM tells us that we have to break into the Vatican, steal the Necronomicon, and give it to Doctor Frikkin' Doom.
So yeah, our ragtag group of super-heroes ended up attacking the Vatican, beating the crap out of the Swiss Guard's Super Team, ripping the vault open, and giving the Necronomicon to Doctor Doom.
All because none of the super teams bothered to check their darn voice mail.
Of course, we later all ended up working together with the assorted super-heroes. There were three or four sessions where a couple of us would play our characters and the rest of us would play other supers. Those fights were pretty fun too.
#RPGaDay 28th - Scariest Game You've Played
Another cheat answer.
Back in the day, when I was running Call of Cthulhu at cons, one of our group's younger siblings was an audio nerd. So he read some latin (possibly from that copy of the necronomicon you used to be able to find in bookstores) and added all sorts of effects to it, so it sounded really creepy.
THEN, we took the cassette tape (ask your parents about those if you don't know what they are), put it on constant loop play and put the boom box in the corner of the room, facing the wall, with the volume just low enough that it was hard to hear.
We kind of freaked out a couple of people when they realized they were hearing spooky stuff that they couldn't easily see the source too.
I think that was the same year that we used as CPR dummy as a quasi prop for a dead body.
Back in the day, when I was running Call of Cthulhu at cons, one of our group's younger siblings was an audio nerd. So he read some latin (possibly from that copy of the necronomicon you used to be able to find in bookstores) and added all sorts of effects to it, so it sounded really creepy.
THEN, we took the cassette tape (ask your parents about those if you don't know what they are), put it on constant loop play and put the boom box in the corner of the room, facing the wall, with the volume just low enough that it was hard to hear.
We kind of freaked out a couple of people when they realized they were hearing spooky stuff that they couldn't easily see the source too.
I think that was the same year that we used as CPR dummy as a quasi prop for a dead body.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
#RPGaDay 27th - Game You'd Like to See A New / Improved Edition Of...
It's kind of cheating to mention the games that I know are getting a new edition that I'm looking forward to reading. Specifically: Exalted, Scion and Trinity. I'm also looking forward to seeing what the Margaret Weis "Heroic Roleplaying" does now that it can slip the restrictions that Marvel put on the game. (Specifically the lack of character creation rules.)
But the game I'd like to see rise again is Castle Falkenstein. (I know, you're shocked since I mention it about every fifth post.) Steampunk has really blown up since then, and I think it'd be great to see the game come back now that the world is more ready to see it. Maybe do it with Fate, though I really did like the conceit that it uses cards because the in-world game designer shocked his high society friends by suggesting they use dice. (Dice are what common folk used for gambling. Proper ladies and gentlemen use cards.)
But the game I'd like to see rise again is Castle Falkenstein. (I know, you're shocked since I mention it about every fifth post.) Steampunk has really blown up since then, and I think it'd be great to see the game come back now that the world is more ready to see it. Maybe do it with Fate, though I really did like the conceit that it uses cards because the in-world game designer shocked his high society friends by suggesting they use dice. (Dice are what common folk used for gambling. Proper ladies and gentlemen use cards.)
#RPGaDay 26th - Coolest Character Sheet
The only sheet that really springs to mind is the Alternate Character Sheet for the East Texas University Savage Worlds setting. Since players are college kids, the character sheet looks like a scan-tron for standardized testing.
Monday, August 25, 2014
#RPGaDay 25th - Favorite RPG No One Else Wants To Play
That's another complicated one. There are certainly games I love that have strong enough detractors that it's not something we play regularly. Mutants and Masterminds is the most common example, but there are folks in my group who are okay with it, and I run it every year at Owlcon. Similarly, Star Wars Saga Edition isn't going to get traction in my group. But there's also folks in it who would play.
I had to think about this for a bit, but I guess that if I had to go through all of my books, I'd say that Wraith: the Oblivion would be the game that nobody would be interested in. Heck, if I were running it, I'd make huge changes to the setting. But I really like the intense personal focus and the Shadow mechanic (which I'd probably houserule to be closer to how the Screwtapes work in Better Angles) was really interesting.
I had to think about this for a bit, but I guess that if I had to go through all of my books, I'd say that Wraith: the Oblivion would be the game that nobody would be interested in. Heck, if I were running it, I'd make huge changes to the setting. But I really like the intense personal focus and the Shadow mechanic (which I'd probably houserule to be closer to how the Screwtapes work in Better Angles) was really interesting.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
#RPGaDay 24th - Most Complicated RPG Owned
I guess Hero System is the most complicated system I own. It's infamous for its complexity. I will say that 99% of the complexity is in the character / NPC generation, and that once you have a character properly constructed, it's a pretty simple game in play.
Shadowrun has a lot of special subsystems (decking, rigging, magic, etc), so that might come close. I actually haven't gotten around to reading my copy of 5th edition, but the editions I am familiar with had that level of complexity. The basic system was okay, but all of the subsystems did add up.
Shadowrun has a lot of special subsystems (decking, rigging, magic, etc), so that might come close. I actually haven't gotten around to reading my copy of 5th edition, but the editions I am familiar with had that level of complexity. The basic system was okay, but all of the subsystems did add up.
#RPGaDay 23rd - Coolest Looking RPG/Book
Hmmm.
The Dresden Files RPG has a nifty look to it. One of the conceits of the game is that it's a sort-of in world artifact. For those not familiar with the setting, in the world of the Dresden Files, the book Dracula was written as a "how to kill Black Court Vampires" instruction manual. As a result of the book, the Black Court of Vampires (1) was almost entirely wiped out. Additionally, Dresden plays tabletop RPGs with a bunch of his friends (who are also werewolves, but that's not really germane to my point). So the leader of the pack had the idea that they could do something similar for all the other monsters out there by publishing a RPG that includes the details on the other monsters out there. So Billy wrote a draft of the game, and it's covered in post-it notes and margin scribbles by Billy, Dresden and Bob the Skull for the "next draft" of the game. Dresden, for instance, says they need to globally change names and redact some things that would get everyone in a lot of trouble if it were revealed. (2)
But I wanted to mention a couple of other books that deserve mention.
The four DC Adventures RPG books by Green Ronin are full of art from the DC archives. Best of all, everything in the books is pre-New52. So there's all sorts of gorgeous stuff in there.
Eclipse Phase and Shadowrun both have great graphic design across the board.
(1) In the Dresden-verse, there are different kinds of vampires. Black Court Vampires follow the Dracula rules. The Red, White and Jade Courts have different powers and weaknesses.
(2) The game itself isn't "canon" because there's no way Dresden would have told Billy all the secrets the game books reveal. There is an original (and canonical) short story in the setting book.
The Dresden Files RPG has a nifty look to it. One of the conceits of the game is that it's a sort-of in world artifact. For those not familiar with the setting, in the world of the Dresden Files, the book Dracula was written as a "how to kill Black Court Vampires" instruction manual. As a result of the book, the Black Court of Vampires (1) was almost entirely wiped out. Additionally, Dresden plays tabletop RPGs with a bunch of his friends (who are also werewolves, but that's not really germane to my point). So the leader of the pack had the idea that they could do something similar for all the other monsters out there by publishing a RPG that includes the details on the other monsters out there. So Billy wrote a draft of the game, and it's covered in post-it notes and margin scribbles by Billy, Dresden and Bob the Skull for the "next draft" of the game. Dresden, for instance, says they need to globally change names and redact some things that would get everyone in a lot of trouble if it were revealed. (2)
But I wanted to mention a couple of other books that deserve mention.
The four DC Adventures RPG books by Green Ronin are full of art from the DC archives. Best of all, everything in the books is pre-New52. So there's all sorts of gorgeous stuff in there.
Eclipse Phase and Shadowrun both have great graphic design across the board.
(1) In the Dresden-verse, there are different kinds of vampires. Black Court Vampires follow the Dracula rules. The Red, White and Jade Courts have different powers and weaknesses.
(2) The game itself isn't "canon" because there's no way Dresden would have told Billy all the secrets the game books reveal. There is an original (and canonical) short story in the setting book.
Friday, August 22, 2014
#RPGaDay 22nd - Best Secondhand RPG Purchase
This one's really tough. I do often get books secondhand at Half Price Books, but I rarely remember where I bought a book, especially once enough time has passed.
So I am punting this one.
So I am punting this one.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
#RPGaDay 21st - Favorite Licensed RPG
Hmm.
Star Wars Saga Edition is pretty amazing.
Atomic Robo really captures the feel of the setting.
The most recent versions of DC (the M&M 3rd edition) and Marvel (Heroic Roleplaying) were awesome in their own special ways.
And I LOVE the Dresden Files RPG not just as an adaptation of the books, but as an awesome game, and as an awesome, sorta-but-not-in-continuity artifact.
But the game that has to win is the Leverage RPG, because it did the impossible. It lets you run heist games without being master con artists. I've always been a big fan of the heist genre and Leverage is an awesome show. But while fantasy games let you play wizards without having to know magic, or badass kung fu fighters without knowing the first thing about martial arts, heist games, prior to this, really required the players to know how to plan a heist and figure out all of the twists and turns and cool reversals that make a good heist.
Until Leverage cracked it. The quickstart is free and should be read by all. I think the things Leverage does could be done in any game that allowed certain levels of player narrative control. Heck, you could probably even hack a D&D system to do a heist, but allowing the "you thought I did X but really I did Y which set up Z" mechanics is counter to the "you have to prepare for the monster as best you can" methodology of most games. Essentially, Leverage lets players retcon events - not in a way that says "yeah, you didn't stab me last round even though you totally did" way. More like a "yeah, you stabbed me, but I had set up some cameras ahead of time and there's a live feed to the police station, so thanks for giving them all the evidence they needed to put you away."
Leverage rocks.
Star Wars Saga Edition is pretty amazing.
Atomic Robo really captures the feel of the setting.
The most recent versions of DC (the M&M 3rd edition) and Marvel (Heroic Roleplaying) were awesome in their own special ways.
And I LOVE the Dresden Files RPG not just as an adaptation of the books, but as an awesome game, and as an awesome, sorta-but-not-in-continuity artifact.
But the game that has to win is the Leverage RPG, because it did the impossible. It lets you run heist games without being master con artists. I've always been a big fan of the heist genre and Leverage is an awesome show. But while fantasy games let you play wizards without having to know magic, or badass kung fu fighters without knowing the first thing about martial arts, heist games, prior to this, really required the players to know how to plan a heist and figure out all of the twists and turns and cool reversals that make a good heist.
Until Leverage cracked it. The quickstart is free and should be read by all. I think the things Leverage does could be done in any game that allowed certain levels of player narrative control. Heck, you could probably even hack a D&D system to do a heist, but allowing the "you thought I did X but really I did Y which set up Z" mechanics is counter to the "you have to prepare for the monster as best you can" methodology of most games. Essentially, Leverage lets players retcon events - not in a way that says "yeah, you didn't stab me last round even though you totally did" way. More like a "yeah, you stabbed me, but I had set up some cameras ahead of time and there's a live feed to the police station, so thanks for giving them all the evidence they needed to put you away."
Leverage rocks.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
#RPGaDay 19th - Favorite Published Adventure
This one is totally easy: Murder on Arcturus Station for the original Traveler rules. There's a fun story behind it too.
I forget exactly what year this was, but it was sometime around or after college. I'd moved away but was in Louisiana visiting my parents for Christmas. Now that I think about it, it was probably during college because I was there for a long time and once I graduated, I didn't get to take long vacations. I got a call from my old friend Michael (who ran a Villains and Vigilantes game that I swear I've talked about before but apparently haven't) that he had moved to New Orleans and wanted to know if I could visit and maybe game.
I was thrilled and it was cool to see some of the old gang who'd also moved to New Orleans. Anyway, Michael ran Murder on Arcturus Station for me and another member of his gaming group. The premise is: you're on a space station in the middle of nowhere. There's a big important guy Mr. Urshakan, who nobody likes and he's murdered. The space station security is great at busting up drunks, but not so much at solving murders, so they ask the PCs to help.
So, we had fun solving the mystery and I made a note to find a copy so I could see all of the details. And that's when I learned how really awesome the adventure is. You see, when we played, the killer was a labor leader Urshakan was blackmailing. But in the adventure, it could have been any of the ten or so suspects. The book's written so that the GM can pick whodunnit and how they did it. In each case, there's evidence and testimony and timelines so the adventure is never the same twice (unless you want it to be). It's really amazing work and ahead of its time. That is a drawback, however, as modern CSI fans will want to go for evidence that was undetectable when it was written.
Since then, I've run it:
* Once using Traveler for friends one weekend. Most of them weren't familiar with Traveler, but it didn't matter, because it's all about looking for clues and talking to the suspects. I used the same murderer that Michael had used.
* Once using The Babylon Project system. I had to swap out some of the aliens for Babylon 5 aliens, but it was fun. That time it was additionally challenging because one of the PCs was a P5 Telepath, and I had to prepare for how to handle the telepathic aspect. Fortunately, the TV show had already showed me how telepaths and the legal system interacted. In this case, I don't remember who I'd picked, largely because all of my memories of running it are based around the PCs interacting.
* Once using Shadowrun, replacing the space station with an oil platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. This time I really poured my heart into it, working out timelines for all of the suspects and who each of them suspected (or who they'd accuse). Even better, I had multiple overlapping murder plots. Urshakan was poisoned before he was stabbed and the PCs find a ticking bomb under his bed while going over the murder scene. I was almost thrown by one of our players, who had an almost psychic ability to solve mysteries with no evidence correctly identified one of the killers. Fortunately, the other PCs didn't really believe him (because "Played By Kelly" was a 20 pt Psych Lim in Champions) but looking back, they said "dammit, we should have paid attention to Kelly." It being Shadowrun, one of the PCs took a bribe from one of the killers to hide their involvement. AND the guy I considered to be the "real killer" skated because his crime was "get 10 people who hate my boss enough to kill him on the oil platform and one of them is sure to take the opportunity." (Actually, 11 people, if you count the PCs as a suspect, because Urshakan wasn't going to pay them for the job they'd done for him. Of course, one of the PCs' Plot Radar sensed that someone was going to murder Urshakan, so they stayed up all night in the bar in front of plenty of witnesses. It didn't clear the other PCs, but the head of station security really didn't think they'd have done it.)
* I'd consider running it again for some other system, but I think that my Shadowrun version of the adventure was the platonic ideal in terms of making it an interesting and complex mystery to solve. I just now had the idea of adapting it to Eclipse Phase, just to try to figure out how to do a good murder mystery in a world where just about everyone's minds are backed up and can be restored into new bodies trivially. Having Urshakan's consciousness around as a restored backup would add an interesting twist to the investigation. (Scribble, scribble, scribble)
I forget exactly what year this was, but it was sometime around or after college. I'd moved away but was in Louisiana visiting my parents for Christmas. Now that I think about it, it was probably during college because I was there for a long time and once I graduated, I didn't get to take long vacations. I got a call from my old friend Michael (who ran a Villains and Vigilantes game that I swear I've talked about before but apparently haven't) that he had moved to New Orleans and wanted to know if I could visit and maybe game.
I was thrilled and it was cool to see some of the old gang who'd also moved to New Orleans. Anyway, Michael ran Murder on Arcturus Station for me and another member of his gaming group. The premise is: you're on a space station in the middle of nowhere. There's a big important guy Mr. Urshakan, who nobody likes and he's murdered. The space station security is great at busting up drunks, but not so much at solving murders, so they ask the PCs to help.
So, we had fun solving the mystery and I made a note to find a copy so I could see all of the details. And that's when I learned how really awesome the adventure is. You see, when we played, the killer was a labor leader Urshakan was blackmailing. But in the adventure, it could have been any of the ten or so suspects. The book's written so that the GM can pick whodunnit and how they did it. In each case, there's evidence and testimony and timelines so the adventure is never the same twice (unless you want it to be). It's really amazing work and ahead of its time. That is a drawback, however, as modern CSI fans will want to go for evidence that was undetectable when it was written.
Since then, I've run it:
* Once using Traveler for friends one weekend. Most of them weren't familiar with Traveler, but it didn't matter, because it's all about looking for clues and talking to the suspects. I used the same murderer that Michael had used.
* Once using The Babylon Project system. I had to swap out some of the aliens for Babylon 5 aliens, but it was fun. That time it was additionally challenging because one of the PCs was a P5 Telepath, and I had to prepare for how to handle the telepathic aspect. Fortunately, the TV show had already showed me how telepaths and the legal system interacted. In this case, I don't remember who I'd picked, largely because all of my memories of running it are based around the PCs interacting.
* Once using Shadowrun, replacing the space station with an oil platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. This time I really poured my heart into it, working out timelines for all of the suspects and who each of them suspected (or who they'd accuse). Even better, I had multiple overlapping murder plots. Urshakan was poisoned before he was stabbed and the PCs find a ticking bomb under his bed while going over the murder scene. I was almost thrown by one of our players, who had an almost psychic ability to solve mysteries with no evidence correctly identified one of the killers. Fortunately, the other PCs didn't really believe him (because "Played By Kelly" was a 20 pt Psych Lim in Champions) but looking back, they said "dammit, we should have paid attention to Kelly." It being Shadowrun, one of the PCs took a bribe from one of the killers to hide their involvement. AND the guy I considered to be the "real killer" skated because his crime was "get 10 people who hate my boss enough to kill him on the oil platform and one of them is sure to take the opportunity." (Actually, 11 people, if you count the PCs as a suspect, because Urshakan wasn't going to pay them for the job they'd done for him. Of course, one of the PCs' Plot Radar sensed that someone was going to murder Urshakan, so they stayed up all night in the bar in front of plenty of witnesses. It didn't clear the other PCs, but the head of station security really didn't think they'd have done it.)
* I'd consider running it again for some other system, but I think that my Shadowrun version of the adventure was the platonic ideal in terms of making it an interesting and complex mystery to solve. I just now had the idea of adapting it to Eclipse Phase, just to try to figure out how to do a good murder mystery in a world where just about everyone's minds are backed up and can be restored into new bodies trivially. Having Urshakan's consciousness around as a restored backup would add an interesting twist to the investigation. (Scribble, scribble, scribble)
Sunday, August 17, 2014
#RPGaDay 17th - Funniest Game You Played
So, I've played Paranoia and that's certainly the silliest game I've played.
But the funniest game story I've got was from an old Champions game. I don't remember the name of the team, but we were a pretty standard pickup group of super-heroes that defended Houston against super-villains. My character was Dr. Jurassic, a paleontology grad student who had an accident with a velociraptor fossil and a Kirbytech DNA gizmo. He could turn into a Utahraptor (because as dinosaur experts will tell you, the raptors in Jurassic Park were way too big, except that after the movie was made, they found raptor skeletons that were the "right" size). So he was a big scary dinosaur with sharp claws and teeth. Another player was "Cue", who had a magic pool cue (or maybe she was a mutant and it was a power crutch, I don't recall), and she could make pool balls appear in mid-air, and she's shoot them at bad guys. Different pool balls had different effects.
So, some Inuit critters from the spirit world were making trouble and we were going on this journey through the spirit world to stop it. At one point, our spirit guide tells us that we're about to face this nasty creature, but it'll leave us alone so long as we don't laugh at it. It was magically funny-looking or something, but as long as you didn't laugh, it'd leave you alone. Now, the GM was intending for us to make EGO rolls to avoid laughing.
But Cue's player and I just looked at each other and, for whatever reason, just started laughing hysterically. The GM rolled his eyes and said "okay, I guess we go to initiative them."
Runner Up: It was a big epic 2nd Ed D&D game. One of the players was a Drow Ranger who was Destined to Kill Lloth. We'd gone on a huge quest to get Spiderbane, the artifact sword Also Destined To Kill Lloth. We fought our way through the Demonweb, smashed up stuff in the big robot spider castle thing, and burst in to the throne room. "Darkmover" (the drow) raised his sword and swung.
And promptly fumbled. The sword flew out of his hand and across the room. We scramble to get the sword to him (because only he can wield it) and he swings.... and fumbles again. We get him the sword AGAIN and this time the wizard casts "Glue" to make sure he doesn't drop the damn sword again. We won, eventually. Darkmover started making criticals instead of fumbles.
But the funniest game story I've got was from an old Champions game. I don't remember the name of the team, but we were a pretty standard pickup group of super-heroes that defended Houston against super-villains. My character was Dr. Jurassic, a paleontology grad student who had an accident with a velociraptor fossil and a Kirbytech DNA gizmo. He could turn into a Utahraptor (because as dinosaur experts will tell you, the raptors in Jurassic Park were way too big, except that after the movie was made, they found raptor skeletons that were the "right" size). So he was a big scary dinosaur with sharp claws and teeth. Another player was "Cue", who had a magic pool cue (or maybe she was a mutant and it was a power crutch, I don't recall), and she could make pool balls appear in mid-air, and she's shoot them at bad guys. Different pool balls had different effects.
So, some Inuit critters from the spirit world were making trouble and we were going on this journey through the spirit world to stop it. At one point, our spirit guide tells us that we're about to face this nasty creature, but it'll leave us alone so long as we don't laugh at it. It was magically funny-looking or something, but as long as you didn't laugh, it'd leave you alone. Now, the GM was intending for us to make EGO rolls to avoid laughing.
But Cue's player and I just looked at each other and, for whatever reason, just started laughing hysterically. The GM rolled his eyes and said "okay, I guess we go to initiative them."
Runner Up: It was a big epic 2nd Ed D&D game. One of the players was a Drow Ranger who was Destined to Kill Lloth. We'd gone on a huge quest to get Spiderbane, the artifact sword Also Destined To Kill Lloth. We fought our way through the Demonweb, smashed up stuff in the big robot spider castle thing, and burst in to the throne room. "Darkmover" (the drow) raised his sword and swung.
And promptly fumbled. The sword flew out of his hand and across the room. We scramble to get the sword to him (because only he can wield it) and he swings.... and fumbles again. We get him the sword AGAIN and this time the wizard casts "Glue" to make sure he doesn't drop the damn sword again. We won, eventually. Darkmover started making criticals instead of fumbles.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
#RPGaDay 16th - Game You Wish You Owned
Hmm. I certainly wish I had PDF copies of a lot of the games I've sold off to keep the clutter in check. (And to be honest, it would take me ten minutes to find pirate download copies of just about everything I've sold over the years. But that's not cool.)
The snarky angel on my shoulder just said "A Version Of D&D that fixes the Linear Fighter / Quadratic Wizard problem" or one with a good "Gish" (fighter/wizard crossbreed - though I confess none of us have played a Magus yet, so they may work).
There's certainly a long list of games that I want to at least read someday (Gumshoe, for instance), but that's more of a "yeah, someday" over a "I gotta have it now" wish.
In terms of games I wished existed, I wish there was the Platonic Ideal Super-Hero RPG that everyone in our group liked. I wish Paizo would do a Spelljammer-inspired Adventure Path. I wish that the upcoming Onyx Path Scion and Trinity books are everything that I hope they will be. I wish there was a good Mass Effect RPG (though I've read really good Fate and Savage Worlds conversions).
The snarky angel on my shoulder just said "A Version Of D&D that fixes the Linear Fighter / Quadratic Wizard problem" or one with a good "Gish" (fighter/wizard crossbreed - though I confess none of us have played a Magus yet, so they may work).
There's certainly a long list of games that I want to at least read someday (Gumshoe, for instance), but that's more of a "yeah, someday" over a "I gotta have it now" wish.
In terms of games I wished existed, I wish there was the Platonic Ideal Super-Hero RPG that everyone in our group liked. I wish Paizo would do a Spelljammer-inspired Adventure Path. I wish that the upcoming Onyx Path Scion and Trinity books are everything that I hope they will be. I wish there was a good Mass Effect RPG (though I've read really good Fate and Savage Worlds conversions).
Friday, August 15, 2014
#RPGaDay 15th - Favorite Convention Game
I'm going to cheat and break this into two answers.
Favorite Convention Game I Ran: A Vampire: The Masquerade round where the PCs were charged by the Prince of London to catch Jack The Ripper, who he believed was a vampire. We did a LOT of research (probably too much, since the handout we gave them was pretty long AND not really useful with regards to catching the Ripper) on the killings and put a lot of work into the various NPCs and suspects. One of the upsides of running the same round over and over is that each time you do it, you get better at it, and little details pull together so by the end, it's so much better than the one you started with. The twist to the game was that the Ripper was a normal guy (one of the folks Ripperologists often point to, but honestly I don't recall which one). So when they show the Prince the Ripper, he tells them "I told everyone the Ripper was a vampire. So which vampire was it?" And then the PCs get to pick who they want thrown under the bus. By that point, they've done enough investigation of the vampire suspects that there are good reasons to do so, but it's still a quandary.
Favorite Convention Game I Played: Geez, that's tough. I usually run games at cons. But the times I went to GenCon, I played more than I ran. I think I ran Bloodshadows for WEG once to get some WEG swag, but other than that, I played, which was a nice change. I recall having loads of fun in a Shadowrun round where me and another guy played a couple of ork (or maybe troll) street samauri called "Dis" and "Dat" and we decided to tawk in think Brooklyn accents. That was a hoot, just because we were being goofy while mowing down Renraku security guards. I also played a round of (there it goes again) Castle Falkenstein, which was Clue meets Murder on the Orient Express. It really didn't have anything to do with Falkenstein, as we were all normal people being blackmailed by "Mister Korper" (German for "Body", according to the GM), and we had to solve the murder before the train stopped. My character was a British Banker who stole bank funds to cover his gambling debts and then had to steal more to pay off Korper. I was an unashamed coward, so when I mouthed off to the German military officer, he challenged me to a duel and I told him "why would I want to do anything as bloody stupid as that? You'll kill me." We eventually figured out who the killer was (one of the PCs, of course), and I do have to give the guy who played the killer credit, he did a great job of misdirecting the rest of us and chasing leads until we finally found some clue that gave him away.
Favorite Convention Game I Ran: A Vampire: The Masquerade round where the PCs were charged by the Prince of London to catch Jack The Ripper, who he believed was a vampire. We did a LOT of research (probably too much, since the handout we gave them was pretty long AND not really useful with regards to catching the Ripper) on the killings and put a lot of work into the various NPCs and suspects. One of the upsides of running the same round over and over is that each time you do it, you get better at it, and little details pull together so by the end, it's so much better than the one you started with. The twist to the game was that the Ripper was a normal guy (one of the folks Ripperologists often point to, but honestly I don't recall which one). So when they show the Prince the Ripper, he tells them "I told everyone the Ripper was a vampire. So which vampire was it?" And then the PCs get to pick who they want thrown under the bus. By that point, they've done enough investigation of the vampire suspects that there are good reasons to do so, but it's still a quandary.
Favorite Convention Game I Played: Geez, that's tough. I usually run games at cons. But the times I went to GenCon, I played more than I ran. I think I ran Bloodshadows for WEG once to get some WEG swag, but other than that, I played, which was a nice change. I recall having loads of fun in a Shadowrun round where me and another guy played a couple of ork (or maybe troll) street samauri called "Dis" and "Dat" and we decided to tawk in think Brooklyn accents. That was a hoot, just because we were being goofy while mowing down Renraku security guards. I also played a round of (there it goes again) Castle Falkenstein, which was Clue meets Murder on the Orient Express. It really didn't have anything to do with Falkenstein, as we were all normal people being blackmailed by "Mister Korper" (German for "Body", according to the GM), and we had to solve the murder before the train stopped. My character was a British Banker who stole bank funds to cover his gambling debts and then had to steal more to pay off Korper. I was an unashamed coward, so when I mouthed off to the German military officer, he challenged me to a duel and I told him "why would I want to do anything as bloody stupid as that? You'll kill me." We eventually figured out who the killer was (one of the PCs, of course), and I do have to give the guy who played the killer credit, he did a great job of misdirecting the rest of us and chasing leads until we finally found some clue that gave him away.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
#RPGaDay 14th - Best Convention Purchase
Another easy one. Castle Falkenstein. I went to GenCon twice (1994 & 1995), and, on advice of a friend, put one suitcase inside another on the way up so I could fill up the second on the way back. I bought a LOT of stuff. But Falkenstein was definitely the best.
I still wish I knew what to do with it.
In today's instant-gratification PDF RPG market, I rarely buy stuff at cons anymore. Heck, I rarely buy RPGs at brick and mortar stores. It's all PDFs that I read on my iPad. I do spend all kinds of cash at my friendly local comic book store, so I don't feel too guilty about doing that. Someday, I may make a similar jump to just digital comics, but I haven't gotten there yet.
I still wish I knew what to do with it.
In today's instant-gratification PDF RPG market, I rarely buy stuff at cons anymore. Heck, I rarely buy RPGs at brick and mortar stores. It's all PDFs that I read on my iPad. I do spend all kinds of cash at my friendly local comic book store, so I don't feel too guilty about doing that. Someday, I may make a similar jump to just digital comics, but I haven't gotten there yet.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
#RPGaDay 20th - Will Still Play In 20 Years Time
Assuming we haven't all been uploaded to the cloud and get to MMO "for reals", I assume that me and my regular group will still be playing some version of D&D-esque fantasy until the stars (or our bodies) grow cold. Gaming is, for better or worse, built on the foundations Gygax and Arneson laid in the 1970s. It will probably be as different from the current versions of d20/D&D as today's games are from the basic boxed set, but it'll still be recognizably D&D-ish.
#RPGaDay 18th - Favorite Game System
How is that a fair question?
First off, does it mean "favorite game to run?" "To play?" "For when I want to play some specific genre?" "Favorite system to hack for multiple genres?" "Favorite pick up system?"
I mean, if I wanted to play a game that delivers the sort of Dungeons and Dragons Experience that I and my group like to play, then I'd pick Pathfinder. That's the game we've more or less settled around for most of our weekly play. We've played a full campaign from planned start to finish, we're working our way through Rise of the Runelords and we're probably going to play another AP after that. If I were feeling up to the time commitment, I'd probably want to run (just based on the summaries on the Paizo Page, and listening to an AP podcast) Carrion Crown or Mummy's Mask. (Though Iron Gods looks pretty sweet.) But running a Pathfinder game, especially with a large, experienced group, would be pretty challenging.
I've wanted to run a supers game for our group for a while. I'd like to use Mutants and Masterminds, and not just because Vigilance Press pays me to write M&M stuff for them. It's a good supers system that has enough flexibility and crunch to do just about any kind of super-heroic stuff. That said, I'd also run Icons or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. (Probably MHR because one of the campaigns I have in my head is cosmic supers and scaling Icons for cosmic would require a little system hacking.)
I guess if we're talking "a game I can muck around with to use for different genres" then FATE is the way to go. Fate Core is pretty simple and I can pick up Dresden Files if I want to use it for urban fantasy/horror, Atomic Robo for pulp super-heroics, and the different hacks out there for other genres. I'm looking forward to an upcoming Steampunk Fate game (The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences) and Fate Cthulhu. I'm also a fan of the Strange Fate hack used in the Kerberos Club, which is a supers hack, even if it's a steampunk setting. That said, I've only played/run Spirit of the Century twice, so I'd need to play or run more Fate to commit to liking it.
First off, does it mean "favorite game to run?" "To play?" "For when I want to play some specific genre?" "Favorite system to hack for multiple genres?" "Favorite pick up system?"
I mean, if I wanted to play a game that delivers the sort of Dungeons and Dragons Experience that I and my group like to play, then I'd pick Pathfinder. That's the game we've more or less settled around for most of our weekly play. We've played a full campaign from planned start to finish, we're working our way through Rise of the Runelords and we're probably going to play another AP after that. If I were feeling up to the time commitment, I'd probably want to run (just based on the summaries on the Paizo Page, and listening to an AP podcast) Carrion Crown or Mummy's Mask. (Though Iron Gods looks pretty sweet.) But running a Pathfinder game, especially with a large, experienced group, would be pretty challenging.
I've wanted to run a supers game for our group for a while. I'd like to use Mutants and Masterminds, and not just because Vigilance Press pays me to write M&M stuff for them. It's a good supers system that has enough flexibility and crunch to do just about any kind of super-heroic stuff. That said, I'd also run Icons or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. (Probably MHR because one of the campaigns I have in my head is cosmic supers and scaling Icons for cosmic would require a little system hacking.)
I guess if we're talking "a game I can muck around with to use for different genres" then FATE is the way to go. Fate Core is pretty simple and I can pick up Dresden Files if I want to use it for urban fantasy/horror, Atomic Robo for pulp super-heroics, and the different hacks out there for other genres. I'm looking forward to an upcoming Steampunk Fate game (The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences) and Fate Cthulhu. I'm also a fan of the Strange Fate hack used in the Kerberos Club, which is a supers hack, even if it's a steampunk setting. That said, I've only played/run Spirit of the Century twice, so I'd need to play or run more Fate to commit to liking it.
#RPGaDay 13th - Most Memorable Character Death
Well, I'm pretty sure I've had some PCs die but were resurrected so quickly it really didn't count. Similarly, I had a Villains and Vigilantes character die (which is nigh-impossible) back in high school but when I told the GM he'd killed me, he said "nope, you're not dead - you're just in a coma."
I think the only time I ever had a character stay dead was by choice. It was a 3.5 D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms. The premise was pretty nifty. The PCs had inherited a house, only to discover that there was an ENORMOUS dungeon in their basement. I picked an Assimar Bard, and quickly regretted it. Yes, his bardsong made all of the rest of the group happy, but I quickly discovered that Bardsong and an occasional buff were all I was contributing, when other party members (who knew the rules much better than I did) were becoming super-badasses. So instead of playing it safe (because I had a crappy armor class and few hit points), I played recklessly. I jumped into combat, usually helping out with bardsong and providing flanking bonuses. I rarely hit anything, but at least I was in the middle of the fun.
And then a purple worm ate him dead in one shot. I said "okay, I'm done with this guy" and made a reasonably optimized fighter. Yes, I was still weak sauce compared to the battle cleric and the mages of mass destruction, but I was having a lot more fun. And going with this new, reckless, attitude, we got our hands on a Harrowing Deck of Many Things. Normally, I avoid those things like the plague because I would rather not get super toys if it risked getting turned into something awful. Tymora was with me that night because I drew some really badass cards that made Gideon the Fighter one of the more powerful members of the group. Yeah, he lost the ability to speak and looked like a deformed freak, but he was Large Size, had an insane strength and a lot of new powerful magic items.
I think the only time I ever had a character stay dead was by choice. It was a 3.5 D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms. The premise was pretty nifty. The PCs had inherited a house, only to discover that there was an ENORMOUS dungeon in their basement. I picked an Assimar Bard, and quickly regretted it. Yes, his bardsong made all of the rest of the group happy, but I quickly discovered that Bardsong and an occasional buff were all I was contributing, when other party members (who knew the rules much better than I did) were becoming super-badasses. So instead of playing it safe (because I had a crappy armor class and few hit points), I played recklessly. I jumped into combat, usually helping out with bardsong and providing flanking bonuses. I rarely hit anything, but at least I was in the middle of the fun.
And then a purple worm ate him dead in one shot. I said "okay, I'm done with this guy" and made a reasonably optimized fighter. Yes, I was still weak sauce compared to the battle cleric and the mages of mass destruction, but I was having a lot more fun. And going with this new, reckless, attitude, we got our hands on a Harrowing Deck of Many Things. Normally, I avoid those things like the plague because I would rather not get super toys if it risked getting turned into something awful. Tymora was with me that night because I drew some really badass cards that made Gideon the Fighter one of the more powerful members of the group. Yeah, he lost the ability to speak and looked like a deformed freak, but he was Large Size, had an insane strength and a lot of new powerful magic items.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
#RPGaDay 12th - Old RPG You Still Play / Read
I already answered this one earlier. About once every couple of years or so I pull out the Castle Falkenstein books and read them. They're gorgeous to look at and fun to read.
As for playing, our group tends towards the middle of the road in gaming. We play Pathfinder with a limited selection of books (right now, just Core and Advanced Players Guide. The next adventure path, we may add Ultimate Magic and Combat) to avoid "the hold on, I gotta look up how this feat works" problem that was a real pain when we did an "anything in the srd" game prior to that. When we play other games, it's been a recent iteration of a game, like the Champions game we played using Hero 6th Ed. Or it's a playtest for OwlCon, since about 1/2 of the group is on the board of grand poobahs of OwlCon, and those games are usually recent.
As for playing, our group tends towards the middle of the road in gaming. We play Pathfinder with a limited selection of books (right now, just Core and Advanced Players Guide. The next adventure path, we may add Ultimate Magic and Combat) to avoid "the hold on, I gotta look up how this feat works" problem that was a real pain when we did an "anything in the srd" game prior to that. When we play other games, it's been a recent iteration of a game, like the Champions game we played using Hero 6th Ed. Or it's a playtest for OwlCon, since about 1/2 of the group is on the board of grand poobahs of OwlCon, and those games are usually recent.
Monday, August 11, 2014
#RPGaDay 11th - Wierdest RPG Owned
There's some really odd games I got backing charity bundles on DriveThruRPG, but since I haven't read them, I not sure that counts. And since that's not interesting to talk about, I'm going to talk about TORG: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars.
TORG had a lot of things going for it. First off, the setting had just about everything built in. The premise is that there's these other-dimensional super-evil guys who invade other dimensions, looking to drain the "Possibility Energy" from them. The process turns the reality they conquer into their own reality. So when the great lizardman shaman of the "Living Land" (a land full of dinosaurs) takes over chunks of America, it transforms to match the Living Land. Cars stop working. People sometimes transform into cavemen. And so on. In addition of Dinosaur Land, there was "Pulp Adventure Land", "Evil Japanese Businessmen & Ninjas Land" (it was the 90s and that was a thing back then), "Fantasy Land", "Cyberpunk Land ruled by the evil Cyberpope" and "Gothic Horror Land." (Plus some that invaded later.) PCs were "Storm Knights" - people able to go into foreign realities without transforming and able to use their native tools. (So the Elf Mage can go to regular Earth and cast spells, and his pal the Special Forces Ranger can take his machine gun to Fantasy Land.) The mix-and-match nature of the game let you do just about anything and play just about any character without having to jump campaigns. It also had some great innovations in play - most notably the Drama Deck, a deck of cards that gave PCs (and the GM) little boosts here and there, and also encouraged PCs doing more than just shooting the bad guys. Lastly, the campaign evolved month to month. There was a newsletter you could subscribe to (this was pre-Web, though they had some presence on usenet as alt.games.torg), and each month it had little updates and adventure seeds and the like. The back page was a form you could send back in to WEG, saying what your heroes had done and where they'd done it. And allegedly, they threw that data into something that determined how well the war was going. These days, there'd be some sort of living campaign and wow, OMG, I'd be all over that.
I ran it for a few years and it was a ball. However, the game had some flaws. First off, the effect rules were semi-exponential, and as the game progressed, higher results meant crazier things. At high levels, a Haste Spell cast by our Sorceress let a Pulp Cowboy's horse break the sound barrier. The Core Earth psychic who got nosebleeds bending spoons at the start of the game was eventually using loaded 747s as weapons and could pull satellites out of orbit. Also, trying to make a new spell using the make-a-new-spell from the magic rulebook was a sanity-busting affair. Lastly, the base roll was Stat+Skill+1d20. The problem was stats were 6-13 and skills were 1+. There was no cap to skills, except that it got ridiculously expensive to do raise them after a certain point. That meant that everyone made sure to boost their power stat (dex for shooty types, willpower for holy types, intelligence for magic types, etc) as high as possible and ignore everything else.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the recent news that the German RPG company that had bought TORG ages ago was going to start making new material in the next year or so. I hope they fix some of the broken stuff in the rules.
TORG had a lot of things going for it. First off, the setting had just about everything built in. The premise is that there's these other-dimensional super-evil guys who invade other dimensions, looking to drain the "Possibility Energy" from them. The process turns the reality they conquer into their own reality. So when the great lizardman shaman of the "Living Land" (a land full of dinosaurs) takes over chunks of America, it transforms to match the Living Land. Cars stop working. People sometimes transform into cavemen. And so on. In addition of Dinosaur Land, there was "Pulp Adventure Land", "Evil Japanese Businessmen & Ninjas Land" (it was the 90s and that was a thing back then), "Fantasy Land", "Cyberpunk Land ruled by the evil Cyberpope" and "Gothic Horror Land." (Plus some that invaded later.) PCs were "Storm Knights" - people able to go into foreign realities without transforming and able to use their native tools. (So the Elf Mage can go to regular Earth and cast spells, and his pal the Special Forces Ranger can take his machine gun to Fantasy Land.) The mix-and-match nature of the game let you do just about anything and play just about any character without having to jump campaigns. It also had some great innovations in play - most notably the Drama Deck, a deck of cards that gave PCs (and the GM) little boosts here and there, and also encouraged PCs doing more than just shooting the bad guys. Lastly, the campaign evolved month to month. There was a newsletter you could subscribe to (this was pre-Web, though they had some presence on usenet as alt.games.torg), and each month it had little updates and adventure seeds and the like. The back page was a form you could send back in to WEG, saying what your heroes had done and where they'd done it. And allegedly, they threw that data into something that determined how well the war was going. These days, there'd be some sort of living campaign and wow, OMG, I'd be all over that.
I ran it for a few years and it was a ball. However, the game had some flaws. First off, the effect rules were semi-exponential, and as the game progressed, higher results meant crazier things. At high levels, a Haste Spell cast by our Sorceress let a Pulp Cowboy's horse break the sound barrier. The Core Earth psychic who got nosebleeds bending spoons at the start of the game was eventually using loaded 747s as weapons and could pull satellites out of orbit. Also, trying to make a new spell using the make-a-new-spell from the magic rulebook was a sanity-busting affair. Lastly, the base roll was Stat+Skill+1d20. The problem was stats were 6-13 and skills were 1+. There was no cap to skills, except that it got ridiculously expensive to do raise them after a certain point. That meant that everyone made sure to boost their power stat (dex for shooty types, willpower for holy types, intelligence for magic types, etc) as high as possible and ignore everything else.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the recent news that the German RPG company that had bought TORG ages ago was going to start making new material in the next year or so. I hope they fix some of the broken stuff in the rules.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
#RPGaDay 10th - Favorite Tie in Novel / Game Fiction
It's probably cheating to say "The Werewolf: the Forsaken Novel I wrote that has yet to be published" or "the Demon Short Story that's coming out soon."
So I'm voting for Nigel Findley's Shadowrun novels. He wrote two with the private detective Dirk Montgomery. What was really awesome about Dirk was that he so un-min-maxed. He barely had any cyberware (I think just a smartgun link and a datajack). He wasn't a decker. He wasn't a mage or shaman. So many of the Shadowrun books were all about making as badass a character as possible and going "dang, that guy is cool." Dirk was just a guy who used his head in a world where so many other folks used more guns and more magic and so on. I liked his other books a lot too. It was a sad day when he passed away, far too early.
So I'm voting for Nigel Findley's Shadowrun novels. He wrote two with the private detective Dirk Montgomery. What was really awesome about Dirk was that he so un-min-maxed. He barely had any cyberware (I think just a smartgun link and a datajack). He wasn't a decker. He wasn't a mage or shaman. So many of the Shadowrun books were all about making as badass a character as possible and going "dang, that guy is cool." Dirk was just a guy who used his head in a world where so many other folks used more guns and more magic and so on. I liked his other books a lot too. It was a sad day when he passed away, far too early.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
#RPGaDay 9th - Favorite Die / Dice Set
I'm not a big "dice must be pretty" guy. But I do love my Critical Hit LED D20 that I got as a Christmas or Birthday present a few years ago.
Friday, August 8, 2014
#RPGaDay 8th - Favorite Character
That's a tough one. I'm going to cheat and list a couple:
- Nick Cross/ Microtech (Champions): My good friend Greg started a weekend Champions game and the premise was "you guys are going to be the first heroes of a new Heroic Age." I jumped out first and made Microtech, a cross between the Atom (in that he shrunk) and Blue Beetle (in that he had a lot of gadgets and owned a company). Because I was first, the other characters made characters that kind of stuck to me. One was an ex-girlfriend. Another was my bodyguard. Another was my sister. Another was the head of my security department (and a foreign spy). Another was a super-spy from a hidden heroic age. And the last was a time traveler from a dark future where Australia ruled the world and he was a cyborg gladiator / professional wrestler. The reason that campaign continues to stand out to all of the players and the GM is that the game was really more about character interaction than punching villains. (Which is pretty odd, which you consider Champions is so built around punching villains.) The team had a real Fantastic Four vibe to it, and we spent a lot of time exploring hidden cities, dealing with aliens, and unraveling conspiracies. The GM was really good about responding to player input. For instance, the heroic ages appeared to have a 30 year cycle, with a gap in the 60s. One of the players asked "what happened then" and we got months and months of tracking down the secret James Bond super powered spies of the 60s and the big bad they never managed to really defeat.
- Tesla Krayt (Pathfinder Sorcerer/Blue Dragon Disciple): I usually play goody-goody types. I always pick the heroic/Light Side/Paragon choices and more than a few times my characters have been the only good guys in the group. But every once and a while, a concept pops into my head that is more grey than good. After having a bad experience in the past, even my bad-ish guys are unflinchingly loyal to the group and never do anything to screw the party. So, we're playing the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, and I'd bought the Inner Sea World Guide and after a while, Tesla popped into my head. The idea is that, when the guys who took over Cheliax made deals with devils, some of the noble houses went other ways (and lost). So House Krayt (named after the Krayt dragon from Star Wars) made deals with dragons. They ended up losing. Enter Tesla, a Blue Draconic Sorcerer. He's not a bad guy, but he's been raised in Cheliax and that kind of skews the whole good/bad thing. While Londo from Babylon 5 is one of Tesla's inspirations, Tesla also has the benefit of seeing just how horrible things can go if you make the wrong deal with the wrong entity. So while some folks assumed he'd be all over checking out the Runelords' power for himself, it's so obviously tainted that he doesn't want anywhere near that. That said, as he's gotten more levels in Dragon Disciple, he's becoming a little darker (but still on the side of the the PCs) and I've got some serious plans for a guy in Sandpoint who's been messing with Tesla's business.
- Nightowl (1st Edition AD&D): In college, my best friend and roommate ran a group of us through the Hommlet -> Temple of Elemental Evil -> Giants -> Drow -> Demonweb run. I played a half-elf fighter-thief. This was the first time I'd played a D&D game so long (so long, in fact, that I hit the fighter level cap and was kind of screwed level wise from then up). The DM had a big secondary plot grafted onto the core plot involving, hmm, that part's hazy. Some extra artifacts we needed for some reason. I remember there was a Linear Guild group of anti-PCs that we hated a lot. Anyway, it was the longest game I'd played to date, and it was a ball. I think it lasted all the way up to senior year, in spite of folks coming and going.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
#RPGaDay 7th - Most "Intellectual" Game Owned
Hmm. I'm not really sure what the question means, so I'm winging it.
If Intellectual means "system complexity" then I guess that it's either Pathfinder or Champions/Hero.
If Intellectual means "deals with complex in-world issues" then, hmm, Wraith: the Oblivion maybe.
If Intellectual means "Indie Game Sensibilities", I've got PDFs of Don't Rest Your Head and lots of FATE stuff.
After some reflection, I'll go with Eclipse Phase. It's a science fiction setting that asks a lot of interesting questions. It's also got a pretty complex (but elegant) system.
If Intellectual means "system complexity" then I guess that it's either Pathfinder or Champions/Hero.
If Intellectual means "deals with complex in-world issues" then, hmm, Wraith: the Oblivion maybe.
If Intellectual means "Indie Game Sensibilities", I've got PDFs of Don't Rest Your Head and lots of FATE stuff.
After some reflection, I'll go with Eclipse Phase. It's a science fiction setting that asks a lot of interesting questions. It's also got a pretty complex (but elegant) system.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
#RPGaDay 6th - Favorte RPG Never Get To Play
This is a tricky one. For a long time, I was the guy in my gaming group that bought all sorts of RPGs that our, "D&D or Champions" group weren't interested in playing. For a while, I was in a second group that played Vampire: the Masquerade and Vampire:Dark Ages, which scratched the World of Darkness itch I'd had since I read the first edition of VTM. But over the years, I bought lots of games that I never got a chance to run or play. Most of those games have been sold off in one of my periodic "I'm not going to run it, I'm not going to play it and I don't think I'll be able to use it for something I can run" purges.
Over the years, I've had an outlet for my "I never get to play" games: OwlCon. I've run a lot of systems that my regular group isn't interested in at OwlCon, and it scratches the itch pretty well.
Still, I've held on to a few sets of RPG books that I don't think I'll ever be able to really use, but I don't want to let go of them either.
Over the years, I've had an outlet for my "I never get to play" games: OwlCon. I've run a lot of systems that my regular group isn't interested in at OwlCon, and it scratches the itch pretty well.
Still, I've held on to a few sets of RPG books that I don't think I'll ever be able to really use, but I don't want to let go of them either.
- Aeon/Trinity (White Wolf): White Wolf's Space Opera game. My group gave it a try but it didn't click for them. I'm a huge fan of the setting and I'm looking forward to the upcoming Onyx Path iteration. Confession: my first freelance assignment Trinity Field Report: Media, so that's probably coloring my opinion of it. But I honestly think I'd still love the game even I hadn't worked on it.
- Castle Falkenstein (R. Talsorian Games): I love this game with a fiery passion. However, there's two things that keep me from trying to twist my group into trying it. First off, it's old and massively out of print. Secondly, it's one of those settings that I simultaneously love and am totally stymied as to what to run in it. It's choice paralysis. {For the record, the other setting I feel that way about is Day After Ragnarok. I had one adventure and then my brain locked up and I couldn't come up with anything else.} I have played it at GenCon once. And I ran a dimension hopping game where the PC's had an adventure in that setting, though I wasn't using the rules. But I don't know if I'll ever do more than enjoy the read. And, to be fair, the books are written as if a modern day RPG designer got sucked into a dimensional vortex and ended up saving the world. After doing so, he wrote the game for his friends (including Mad King Ludwig and Oberon of Faerie) so they'd understand what he did back in his world. And, theoretically speaking, Oberon and Ludwig's wizard sent copies back to Mike Pondsmith (the creator of the game) and he published the game for us. I got a chance to sit in on a Falkenstein panel at GenCon many many years ago, and Mike Pondsmith is an awesome guy and I wish I could back a dumptruck of money to his place and say "gimmie more Falkenstein!"
- Deadlands Noir (Pinnacle): This was a game that I backed on Kickstarter to unhealthy levels. It's a simple premise - take the Weird West timeline of Deadlands and roll it forward to the 1920s, and the signature city is New Orleans. So it's pulp era, urban horror and set in the town I was born in. Yeah, I backed the crap out of it. I posted to facebook that "Deadlands Noir is so targeted at me that it may as well have split the arrow previously sitting on the bull's eye." I've got the books, the GM screen, the adventures, the cardboard standees, the battle-maps, the dice, the poker chips, the poker decks and the figures. Don't know if I'll ever get more than the enjoyment of reading out of it, but I've got it and I ain't letting go.
- Star Wars Saga Edition (Wizards of the Coast): A d20 Star Wars game that, by all accounts, fixes the "if you're not a Jedi, you're lame" problem that the WEG iteration had. I've got all but two of the books and I think it's a great system. I've got four or five campaigns I could run, but once again, I'm up against the Out of Print problem and a good chunk of the group isn't interested in playing Star Wars. I think we'd also run into the problem of the game being another flavor of d20, and we regularly hit the wall in our Pathfinder game when two folks think the rules work differently (because of edition changes) and we have to stop and look up the answer. The game hit me during one of my love periods in my ongoing love/disinterest with Star Wars.
#RPGaDay 5th - Most Old School Game Owned
Here's another confession - I tend to give games away or to Half Price Books unless they've got some kind of strong personal attachment or I'm using them. So I don't have any of my 1st or 2nd Edition stuff. I have a 3.5 Players Guide that's in my "Take to Half Price" stack, but that's the closest to Old School. I was never interested in any of the Old School Retro-Clones.
In terms of old games, I have a Traveler adventure that I'm going to have a long talk about on Day 19. I think I've got a copy of Champions (Big Blue Book with George Perez cover) in the back of my closet. I hung on to a few choice pieces of Classic World of Darkness stuff, but it'll be a long time until Vampire The Masquerade is considered "old school."
In terms of old games, I have a Traveler adventure that I'm going to have a long talk about on Day 19. I think I've got a copy of Champions (Big Blue Book with George Perez cover) in the back of my closet. I hung on to a few choice pieces of Classic World of Darkness stuff, but it'll be a long time until Vampire The Masquerade is considered "old school."
Monday, August 4, 2014
#RPGaDay 4th - Most Recent RPG Purchase
The Laundry RPG by Cubicle Seven. I'd always heard good things about the Laundry Files books, and I finally got around to getting the first book. And then over the next two weeks, I read the whole series to date. I'm an old fan of Call of Cthulhu, and since the Laundry uses the CoC ruleset, it was almost impossible to resist. And, of course, since I bought the game, I now want to run it. I really don't think CoC is in my regular group's wheelhouse, but I will probably run it at OwlCon.
The Laundry makes me think of the old days of running Call of Cthulhu at NanCon. NanCon was Houston's big RPG convention. I was part of a group of folks that ran CoC, which was a strange experience. You see, I hadn't read more than one or two of the Lovecraft books and I didn't have a copy of the rules. But I had training wheels. The group used a co-GMing style, with a GM and "a Thing". First year, I just helped out, voicing NPCs and when the group split up, I'd take one half. I did well enough that the next year, I was promoted to GM. I never wrote any of the adventures, but the group would playtest the adventure and everyone would chime in. I ran a few years, and it was loads of fun. It was an insane schedule, running the same adventure 3-4 times a day for two days, but it was a fun kind of insane. There's an art to running a CoC con round properly. You can't just drive them all mad and kill them right away. You've got to work up to it. Nobody gets out alive, and if you manage to drive the PCs mad to the point that they kill each other, it's considered a perfect score.
Here's the really crazy part - I never actually owned a copy of Call of Cthulhu. Not until long after NanCon shut down. I always kept meaning to buy one, but I only theoretically needed it for NanCon, and I never looked at the book when I was running.
The Laundry makes me think of the old days of running Call of Cthulhu at NanCon. NanCon was Houston's big RPG convention. I was part of a group of folks that ran CoC, which was a strange experience. You see, I hadn't read more than one or two of the Lovecraft books and I didn't have a copy of the rules. But I had training wheels. The group used a co-GMing style, with a GM and "a Thing". First year, I just helped out, voicing NPCs and when the group split up, I'd take one half. I did well enough that the next year, I was promoted to GM. I never wrote any of the adventures, but the group would playtest the adventure and everyone would chime in. I ran a few years, and it was loads of fun. It was an insane schedule, running the same adventure 3-4 times a day for two days, but it was a fun kind of insane. There's an art to running a CoC con round properly. You can't just drive them all mad and kill them right away. You've got to work up to it. Nobody gets out alive, and if you manage to drive the PCs mad to the point that they kill each other, it's considered a perfect score.
Here's the really crazy part - I never actually owned a copy of Call of Cthulhu. Not until long after NanCon shut down. I always kept meaning to buy one, but I only theoretically needed it for NanCon, and I never looked at the book when I was running.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
#RPGaDay 3rd - First RPG Purchase
Not much to say about this. I think my parents bought me the Basic D&D Boxed set, but I remember buying the AD&D Players Guide with my own money. I'd save up my allowance, set aside money for my comic book habit (probably at that time, not much more than Uncanny X-Men and Dazzler), and then get a module or another of the core books.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
#RPGaDay 2nd - First Game GM'ed
Well, if you look at my first post, you'll see that the first game I ran was Basic D&D.
I think the first time I ran a game and really "got" being a GM was a Villains and Vigilantes game I ran for, hmm, a couple of years, I think. The basic premise was that Merlin the Magician had sent these magic rings to a group of super-heroes to protect England. I found a cool castle map in Dragon Magazine and that was their base. Of course, the players weren't as interested in being Merlin's super-heroes as they were in being a punk rock band.
While it was a crazy group, I really started grokking how to structure a campaign, along with subplots and recurring villains and such.
I think the first time I ran a game and really "got" being a GM was a Villains and Vigilantes game I ran for, hmm, a couple of years, I think. The basic premise was that Merlin the Magician had sent these magic rings to a group of super-heroes to protect England. I found a cool castle map in Dragon Magazine and that was their base. Of course, the players weren't as interested in being Merlin's super-heroes as they were in being a punk rock band.
While it was a crazy group, I really started grokking how to structure a campaign, along with subplots and recurring villains and such.
Friday, August 1, 2014
#RPGADay 1st - First RPG Played
That's actually a question I have to think about. You see, my introduction to RPGs was around age 10 when my best friend Jay came back from camp and told me all about this cool game. He handed me the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Boxed Set and told me that he was going to play a fighter and a magic user and that I was going to be the Dungeon Master. I shrugged and started populating B1 with monsters. I followed instructions until Jay pointed out that I didn't have to put monsters into EVERY room.
I barely understood the rules but we had fun and soon we had a group of 5-6 kids being driven to one house or another to play once a week. I made an NPC hobbit thief named Bilbo and traced the art from my Rankin-Bass Hobbit storybook album onto the little square on the character sheet for pictures. The group split up because we were kids and kids can be jerks to each other. We sort of played a mutant Basic/AD&D setup (largely because we didn't really understand the rules).
I think the first time I actually got to sit on the other side of the screen was a few years later at the closest thing to a con we had. The hobby shop that sold D&D stuff sponsored what I guess was a kind of mini-con. A college kid name Michael ran the "Fez" modules, which were, for my money, some of the best puzzle adventures of all time. As I recall, I won the vote for best player and got a gift certificate or something. I was boggled, especially considering that there were GROWNUPS at the table. Going by when the module came out, I would have been 13 at the time. That game introduced me to a group of kids who I gamed with off and on until I went off to college.
I barely understood the rules but we had fun and soon we had a group of 5-6 kids being driven to one house or another to play once a week. I made an NPC hobbit thief named Bilbo and traced the art from my Rankin-Bass Hobbit storybook album onto the little square on the character sheet for pictures. The group split up because we were kids and kids can be jerks to each other. We sort of played a mutant Basic/AD&D setup (largely because we didn't really understand the rules).
I think the first time I actually got to sit on the other side of the screen was a few years later at the closest thing to a con we had. The hobby shop that sold D&D stuff sponsored what I guess was a kind of mini-con. A college kid name Michael ran the "Fez" modules, which were, for my money, some of the best puzzle adventures of all time. As I recall, I won the vote for best player and got a gift certificate or something. I was boggled, especially considering that there were GROWNUPS at the table. Going by when the module came out, I would have been 13 at the time. That game introduced me to a group of kids who I gamed with off and on until I went off to college.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Challenge Accepted
Okay, before you read this, check out this post from a good friend of mine, Theron, who posted the following to My Dice Are Older Than You.
Back. Now, those who know me know that when it comes time to make a new character for a campaign, I usually have five or six that I want to play, but eventually narrow it down to one, often based on what the rest of the group plays. (So, if in a supers game, someone wants to play the speedster, I let them play the speedster and I play my trick arrow guy, or whatever.)
I had a long car ride today, and had some time to think about this.
Back. Now, those who know me know that when it comes time to make a new character for a campaign, I usually have five or six that I want to play, but eventually narrow it down to one, often based on what the rest of the group plays. (So, if in a supers game, someone wants to play the speedster, I let them play the speedster and I play my trick arrow guy, or whatever.)
I had a long car ride today, and had some time to think about this.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Eclipsearama - Dr. Hindenberg
Design Notes: Hurray for Hindenburg. The hard part really was making a total sad sack / incompetent guy into someone that you'd actually want to have along while Gatecrashing. But, as Mom once said, he's one of the best xenobiologists in the galaxy, it's just that he's not as good with human biology. So while that's reflected in his stats, this version is actually a good doctor for people too. I was thinking of making him another AGI, this one in a arachnoid morph, but it's just so right to make him an uplifted octopus, even if his source material has him as more of a crab with face tentacles.
Background: Dr. Hindenburg was created by Somatek to be a doctor for his fellow uplifts. But he wanted to travel and as soon as he could, went to work for Pathfinder as a staff physician on Mars. He met Professor Falkenstein, who was the first human to treat him as a friend. He has remained a close companion to the Professor and happily followed along to Pandora Express.
Dr. Hindenburg is an expert in most forms of medicine, though he will admit that he is weakest when it comes to human biology. However, his skill at xenobiology is invaluable to the team.
Dr Hindenburg is the team's biologist / medical expert. He's also the team doctor, of course.
Background: Dr. Hindenburg was created by Somatek to be a doctor for his fellow uplifts. But he wanted to travel and as soon as he could, went to work for Pathfinder as a staff physician on Mars. He met Professor Falkenstein, who was the first human to treat him as a friend. He has remained a close companion to the Professor and happily followed along to Pandora Express.
Dr. Hindenburg is an expert in most forms of medicine, though he will admit that he is weakest when it comes to human biology. However, his skill at xenobiology is invaluable to the team.
Dr Hindenburg is the team's biologist / medical expert. He's also the team doctor, of course.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Eclipsearama - Mercury
Design Notes: Adapting Mercury was tricky. The reason I went with him as a Swarmoid AGI was, well, a gag about how good at Limbo he is. Additionally, there's not much backstory to the original character, so I didn't have a lot of hooks for the Eclipse Phase version of it. I also wanted to make him a field operative, but still remain a stay-at-home kind of guy. I suspect Mercury mostly lives in the Pandora Express servers, and the field version is an alpha fork installed in the swarmoid.
History: Mercury was created by the Solaris Group as a smart accounting program. After spending a few cycles at one of the major banks in New Shanghai, he was leased to Professor Falkenstein. Falkenstein recognized his skills were not limited to simple accounting and purchased a Swarmoid morph so he could assist the field team as their technical advisor. In addition to being an accountant and occasional field crew, Mercury is married to another AGI, LBBR-A, and they have created a joint fork, Dwight.
Role: Mercury is the team's technical expert. He's a very skilled hacker.
History: Mercury was created by the Solaris Group as a smart accounting program. After spending a few cycles at one of the major banks in New Shanghai, he was leased to Professor Falkenstein. Falkenstein recognized his skills were not limited to simple accounting and purchased a Swarmoid morph so he could assist the field team as their technical advisor. In addition to being an accountant and occasional field crew, Mercury is married to another AGI, LBBR-A, and they have created a joint fork, Dwight.
Role: Mercury is the team's technical expert. He's a very skilled hacker.
Eclipsearama - Amy Wu, of the Mars Wus
Design Notes: Amelia is another character who was hard to poke into. She doesn't have a firm role on the show, so I decided to hook on her science aspect (and, of course, being filthy rich). And since the team would probably run into more scientific issues on the other side of Gates, it'd make sense for them to have her come along more often.
Amelia Wu grew up with a dimondium spoon in her mouth. Her parents put the hyper in hyper-elite, and own large chunks of Martian real estate. Amelia wasn't interested in the family business (though the money is nice) and is desperately trying to stave off her parents' desire for her to settle down and have children. Amelia loves science and wants to be a great scientist like Professor Falkenstein.
Role: Amelia is the team's scientific expert and alternate face. If the goal is to have someone on their side when everything's over, she talks to them instead of Riot. She's also really REALLY rich, which is a nice thing to be.
Amelia Wu grew up with a dimondium spoon in her mouth. Her parents put the hyper in hyper-elite, and own large chunks of Martian real estate. Amelia wasn't interested in the family business (though the money is nice) and is desperately trying to stave off her parents' desire for her to settle down and have children. Amelia loves science and wants to be a great scientist like Professor Falkenstein.
Role: Amelia is the team's scientific expert and alternate face. If the goal is to have someone on their side when everything's over, she talks to them instead of Riot. She's also really REALLY rich, which is a nice thing to be.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Eclipsearama - Lila Tortuga
Design Notes: Lila was a difficult character to adapt. Certainly, one of the most defining things about her is the whole One Eyed alien/mutant aspect. And I thought about her having an eyepatch or having to get a morph that's defective, but body repairs and morph surgery are so darn cheap that it didn't seem to make much sense in the Eclipse Phase 'verse. Additionally, I thought about her being an Earth escapee, with her parents still on Earth. In the end, I thought her upbringing in the Orphanarium was more important than her mutant origin, so she's just another poor Martian Orphan who has managed to make a really good life for herself that gets upset once she meets Cook and Riot, but then settles back down working for Pandora Express.
History: Lila was raised in an orphanarium on Mars. Work was hard to find, but she found a job as a freelance Ego Hunter. The corporation that had purchased Cook's indenture put a bounty on him and she needed the money. However, after capturing him and his new robot pall "Riot", that she was kind of fond of the dork and took the Professor's offer to work for Pandora Express.
While Lila is a consummate professional, she has a few soft spots. She tries to help out the orphanarium where she grew up whenever she can. She's also passionate about the Barsoomian Movement. She also has a pet xenoanimal "Cruncher" she found on a Gatecrashing mission.
Role: Lila's in the team's leader, largely because she's very competent when it comes to Gatecrashing skills. She's the pilot of the Pandora Express and the best at dishing out violence.
Personality: Lila is the boss of things and thankfully nobody else wants to be boss so there's no real conflict there. She's very professional and takes a lot of pride in being the best at whatever it is she does. She's passionate about animals and the environment.
History: Lila was raised in an orphanarium on Mars. Work was hard to find, but she found a job as a freelance Ego Hunter. The corporation that had purchased Cook's indenture put a bounty on him and she needed the money. However, after capturing him and his new robot pall "Riot", that she was kind of fond of the dork and took the Professor's offer to work for Pandora Express.
While Lila is a consummate professional, she has a few soft spots. She tries to help out the orphanarium where she grew up whenever she can. She's also passionate about the Barsoomian Movement. She also has a pet xenoanimal "Cruncher" she found on a Gatecrashing mission.
Role: Lila's in the team's leader, largely because she's very competent when it comes to Gatecrashing skills. She's the pilot of the Pandora Express and the best at dishing out violence.
Personality: Lila is the boss of things and thankfully nobody else wants to be boss so there's no real conflict there. She's very professional and takes a lot of pride in being the best at whatever it is she does. She's passionate about animals and the environment.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Eclipsearama - R10t
R10T "Riot" Robichaux
R10T was created by the Go-Nin group for construction work on Luna. However, he quickly discovered it was easier for him to get others to do his job for him instead of working. He supplemented his meager income with petty crimes and grift. However, he ran afoul of the Robot Mafia and rather than let their psychosurgeons reprogram him into a "Remade Man", he decided to kill himself and reload from his "birth backup".
By happenstance he ran into Cook who needed help. For reasons Riot can't explain to himself, he helped Cook escape the Moon and get to Mars. The two became best buds. The Professor offered Riot a job at Pandora Express so long as Riot agreed to some loyalty modifications, so he can't betray them. Riot disagreed, but the Professor secretly modded him anyway.
Role on the Team: Riot is the team's face man (if the goal is to trick or mislead someone), thief and backup muscle.
Personality: Riot is self centered, greedy and egotistical (and some would say those are his good points). But he is a good friend to Cook (usually) and while he doesn't like working, he's usually an asset to the team.
R10T was created by the Go-Nin group for construction work on Luna. However, he quickly discovered it was easier for him to get others to do his job for him instead of working. He supplemented his meager income with petty crimes and grift. However, he ran afoul of the Robot Mafia and rather than let their psychosurgeons reprogram him into a "Remade Man", he decided to kill himself and reload from his "birth backup".
By happenstance he ran into Cook who needed help. For reasons Riot can't explain to himself, he helped Cook escape the Moon and get to Mars. The two became best buds. The Professor offered Riot a job at Pandora Express so long as Riot agreed to some loyalty modifications, so he can't betray them. Riot disagreed, but the Professor secretly modded him anyway.
Role on the Team: Riot is the team's face man (if the goal is to trick or mislead someone), thief and backup muscle.
Personality: Riot is self centered, greedy and egotistical (and some would say those are his good points). But he is a good friend to Cook (usually) and while he doesn't like working, he's usually an asset to the team.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Eclipsearama - Paul J. Cook
PAUL J. COOK
Backstory: Pre-Fall, Paul lived in the New York Archology, firmly entrenched in the middle class. He had dreams of being a daring space explorer, but lacked the aptitudes for it. Working as a courier, he delivered a package to a Skinthetic facility working on a next generation Hibernoid morph. Due to a mixup, the Skinthetics assumed he was a volunteer for the beta testing. He was backed up, transplanted into the hibernoid, where the morph was placed in stasis, and sent to a satellite where he'd be revived in a decade. During that time, the Fall happened. A few months ago, a salvage vessel heard the "come get me" automated signal and investigated. They picked him up and attempted to sell him into indenture. He escaped and eventually found his way to Mars, where his last living relative, Professor Falkenstein, lives.
Falkenstein originally figured to give Cook a harmless desk job at Pandora Express, but on reviewing the bioscans and hearing Cook's story of how he got to Mars, realized there was more to Cook than he appeared. Something happened to Cook while in hibernation. He shows signs of being exposed to the Watts-Macleod Exsurgent virus. However, the only possible time it could have happened was while he was in hibernation, which is a mystery that the Professor wants to solve. Cook does not know of this, and simply thinks that he's lucky.
Role on the Team: Paul is something of a generalist, assisted by his uncanny luck.
Personality: Paul's a pretty easygoing, happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He's surprisingly adaptable, considering he went from a pre-Fall existence to a dangerous post-Fall career exploring strange new worlds. Of course, that's what he wanted to do all along.
Backstory: Pre-Fall, Paul lived in the New York Archology, firmly entrenched in the middle class. He had dreams of being a daring space explorer, but lacked the aptitudes for it. Working as a courier, he delivered a package to a Skinthetic facility working on a next generation Hibernoid morph. Due to a mixup, the Skinthetics assumed he was a volunteer for the beta testing. He was backed up, transplanted into the hibernoid, where the morph was placed in stasis, and sent to a satellite where he'd be revived in a decade. During that time, the Fall happened. A few months ago, a salvage vessel heard the "come get me" automated signal and investigated. They picked him up and attempted to sell him into indenture. He escaped and eventually found his way to Mars, where his last living relative, Professor Falkenstein, lives.
Falkenstein originally figured to give Cook a harmless desk job at Pandora Express, but on reviewing the bioscans and hearing Cook's story of how he got to Mars, realized there was more to Cook than he appeared. Something happened to Cook while in hibernation. He shows signs of being exposed to the Watts-Macleod Exsurgent virus. However, the only possible time it could have happened was while he was in hibernation, which is a mystery that the Professor wants to solve. Cook does not know of this, and simply thinks that he's lucky.
Role on the Team: Paul is something of a generalist, assisted by his uncanny luck.
Personality: Paul's a pretty easygoing, happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He's surprisingly adaptable, considering he went from a pre-Fall existence to a dangerous post-Fall career exploring strange new worlds. Of course, that's what he wanted to do all along.
Eclipsearama
So, I've recently become a fan of the Eclipse Phase RPG. The premise of the campaign setting is that humanity was on the edge of the Singularity. Nanotech replicators were becoming commonplace. You could upload your mind into computers, and then download into new better-than-human biological bodies. Octopi and other animals had been uplifted to human intelligence. There were still some bumps in the road, but the sort of techno-utopia some folks dream about was on the way.
And then these self-improving AIs went absolutely insane. And we're not talking "hey baby, wanna kill all humans" crazy. We're talking the full on Call of Cthulhu, Great Old One, soul destroying reality warping crazy. And then they left through these possibly alien portals to parts unknown and haven't been seen since.
So Earth's a smoking ruin and the refugees are scattered across the solar system on colonies we'd made everywhere from Mercury to beyond Pluto.
The default assumption is that PCs are members of a secret society called "Firewall" that makes sure that "transhumanity" doesn't get wiped out.
So after listening to the Role Playing Public Radio Actual Play Campaign "Know Evil" I was totally hooked on the setting. The rules seem pretty straightforward, and there's a FATE conversion in development that's going into playtest this summer.
But I wanted to play with the actual character creation rules and I was going to make the cast of Firefly but someone already did it.
So then I thought, what about Futurama?
My initial idea was that the team was a Firewall Cell, the Professor was their Proxy and the "Pandora Express" was just a cover for them. Then I thought it wasn't really a good fit and instead threw away the Firewall connections. Don't get me wrong, they are Gatecrashers, and that is not a job for the faint of heart. These guys have a lot more on the ball than their counterparts onscreen. But Firewall is a meat grinder, and what I was writing was moving the characters so far away from their original conceptions that it was only connected in a "see what I did there" way.
So here's the core idea. In the theoretical game, the Professor in an NPC who owns and runs "Pandora Express," a scrappy little Gatecrashing supply company. They're not the guys who go through the gates first and get eaten by exo-threats. Pandora Express takes these guys supplies. Their primary vehicle is a GEV, "The Pandora Express", but it is modified with what is essentially a tow hitch for when they have to haul larger amounts of cargo through gates. Of course, due to nanofabricators and such, they rarely need to haul large cargo. More often, they carry plans or data back and forth through the gates. Additionally, they often ferry unique artifacts back and forth.
Professor Herbert Falkenstein (PhD, Mars University) is a Professor of SCIENCE at Mars University. He spent a long time in the public sector at Omnicorp, but a bad experience led him to abandon his career and return to academia. He was one of the initial consultants when the first Pandora gate was discovered, and is considered to be an expert in many fields. However, his cantankerous personality (including his refusal to resleeve into a new body until this one finally breaks down) have diminished his reputation somewhat. He formed Pandora Express as a way to supplement his income and further his experiments.
Notes: The Professor has a rival on the faculty of the University of Mars (Professor Vernon Wormwood), and was once in a relationship with Dr. Margaret O'Malley, his former boss at Omnicorp and eventual chairman of the board of the Pathfinder corporation. He is sleeved in a basic synthmorph with only a few basic modifications.
Role: The Professor isn't a PC. He's the quest giver NPC. As such, I haven't bothered to give him stats.
{Side Note: Certainly Gunter the uplifted monkey and his clone/child are viable side characters. Cubert was slow-grown so probably doesn't have the problems the Lost do. He's a jerk, but he's not psychotic.}
And then these self-improving AIs went absolutely insane. And we're not talking "hey baby, wanna kill all humans" crazy. We're talking the full on Call of Cthulhu, Great Old One, soul destroying reality warping crazy. And then they left through these possibly alien portals to parts unknown and haven't been seen since.
So Earth's a smoking ruin and the refugees are scattered across the solar system on colonies we'd made everywhere from Mercury to beyond Pluto.
The default assumption is that PCs are members of a secret society called "Firewall" that makes sure that "transhumanity" doesn't get wiped out.
So after listening to the Role Playing Public Radio Actual Play Campaign "Know Evil" I was totally hooked on the setting. The rules seem pretty straightforward, and there's a FATE conversion in development that's going into playtest this summer.
But I wanted to play with the actual character creation rules and I was going to make the cast of Firefly but someone already did it.
So then I thought, what about Futurama?
My initial idea was that the team was a Firewall Cell, the Professor was their Proxy and the "Pandora Express" was just a cover for them. Then I thought it wasn't really a good fit and instead threw away the Firewall connections. Don't get me wrong, they are Gatecrashers, and that is not a job for the faint of heart. These guys have a lot more on the ball than their counterparts onscreen. But Firewall is a meat grinder, and what I was writing was moving the characters so far away from their original conceptions that it was only connected in a "see what I did there" way.
So here's the core idea. In the theoretical game, the Professor in an NPC who owns and runs "Pandora Express," a scrappy little Gatecrashing supply company. They're not the guys who go through the gates first and get eaten by exo-threats. Pandora Express takes these guys supplies. Their primary vehicle is a GEV, "The Pandora Express", but it is modified with what is essentially a tow hitch for when they have to haul larger amounts of cargo through gates. Of course, due to nanofabricators and such, they rarely need to haul large cargo. More often, they carry plans or data back and forth through the gates. Additionally, they often ferry unique artifacts back and forth.
Professor Herbert Falkenstein (PhD, Mars University) is a Professor of SCIENCE at Mars University. He spent a long time in the public sector at Omnicorp, but a bad experience led him to abandon his career and return to academia. He was one of the initial consultants when the first Pandora gate was discovered, and is considered to be an expert in many fields. However, his cantankerous personality (including his refusal to resleeve into a new body until this one finally breaks down) have diminished his reputation somewhat. He formed Pandora Express as a way to supplement his income and further his experiments.
Notes: The Professor has a rival on the faculty of the University of Mars (Professor Vernon Wormwood), and was once in a relationship with Dr. Margaret O'Malley, his former boss at Omnicorp and eventual chairman of the board of the Pathfinder corporation. He is sleeved in a basic synthmorph with only a few basic modifications.
Role: The Professor isn't a PC. He's the quest giver NPC. As such, I haven't bothered to give him stats.
{Side Note: Certainly Gunter the uplifted monkey and his clone/child are viable side characters. Cubert was slow-grown so probably doesn't have the problems the Lost do. He's a jerk, but he's not psychotic.}
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Where Has He Been?
So I guess that the dual punches of MWP losing the Marvel license JUST DAYS before we'd have gotten the second Annihilation sourcebook, which would have given us official stats on the Guardians of the Galaxy AND that Cartoon Network decided that Young Justice wasn't moving enough toys kind of threw me off my game.
And then I got some freelance projects that took up my spare time.
And then I sort of just let things lie fallow because I didn't know what to say.
But I'm back now and I'm going to try to update this blog semi regularly.
First up, some Eclipse Phase stuff because that's my new crack at the moment.
And then I got some freelance projects that took up my spare time.
And then I sort of just let things lie fallow because I didn't know what to say.
But I'm back now and I'm going to try to update this blog semi regularly.
First up, some Eclipse Phase stuff because that's my new crack at the moment.
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