The Bast Les Miserables

FtA: The System

2012-12-27T07:14:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago, I mentioned that a mechanic I had been playing with as a mini-game within a module seemed to be more robust than I had anticipated, and it might work as a core mechanic for From the Ashes. Having toyed with it for a bit, I figured I'd throw it out there to gauge reactions.

The system has been built around the idea of opposed rolls, but can be adapted to meet what would typically be unopposed checks as well. It's based on three key ideas - Distance, Difference and Degree.

The process is as follows: each party involved would roll a d20, and compare the result to their appropriate Attribute Score. The Distance is the number rolled, subtracted from the Attribute Score. The greater the Distance, the greater the Success, as compared to their own capabilities. The Difference is the lower Distance subtracted from the higher Distance. The greater the Difference, the greater the Success, as compared to the opponent's Success. The Degree is the in-game, non-mechanical measure of that Difference, so a Difference of 1 or 2 results in a minimal Degree of Success, while a Difference of 10 creates an exceptional Degree of Success.

So let's say that Avery, with a Strength of 9, and Grog, with a Strength of 18, are arm wrestling. Grog the man-mountain rolls a 16, while Avery the noodle armed choirboy rolls a 2. Grog's Distance is 2, while Avery's is a 7. Grog's effort is not his best, while Avery puts forth a herculean effort, and manages to defeat his much stronger opponent. The Difference is five, which is an Average Degree of Success - after some hard work, Avery is able to beat Grog at arm wrestling.

If, however, Grog had rolled a 17, while Avery rolled a 1, Grog's Distance would be 1, while Avery's would be 8, so there would be a greater Difference of 7. Perhaps Grog's elbow slipped in a puddle of beer, thus creating a more decisive victory for Avery.

If one party rolls above their attribute, they automatically lose, and the the winner's Distance alone is used to determine the Degree of Success. Without an opponent's Distance to offset their own Distance in determining the Degree, an Exceptional Degree of Success is much more likely.

This time around, Grog rolls a 3, while Avery rolls a 12. Avery fails his roll, and Grog's Distance of 15 is used to determine the Degree of Success. With a Degree of 15, poor Avery doesn't stand a chance. Grog slams Avery's arm to the table with a resounding, "THUNK". Avery thinks his arm might be broken.

A tie means the challenge is at an impasse, and continues on to the next round, with each player taking a +1 penalty to their roll from the strain of continued challenge. This puts a greater burden upon whichever has the lower score, as it should be in sustained challenges.

Grog rolls a 16, while Avery rolls a 7. Both of their Distances are 2, so they roll again, this time with a +1 modifier to their roll. This time Avery rolls an 8, while Grog rolls another 16. Including the modifier, Avery did not roll below his score, and so he loses the challenge.

For rolls that would not typically be considered to be opposed, the GM sets a Target Number. The Player makes their roll, corresponding to the appropriate Attribute, while the GM makes the opposing roll. The Target Number represents the objective level of challenge of the task, while the die roll factors in the random events that can occur. The easier the task, the lower the Target Number.

While Grog is very strong, no-one has ever accused him of being terribly agile. Faced with a chasm, he decides to leap across, although his Dexterity is only a 10. The GM determines that the chasm is not terribly wide, and assigns it a Target Number of 6. Grog rolls a 7, while the GM rolls a 2. Grog's Distance is 3, while the GM's Distance is 4, resulting in a Difference of 1, in the GM's favor. Perhaps a strong gust of wind catches Grog as he jumps, or he does not gauge the distance correctly, but either way, he does not make it across. A Degree of 1 indicates a Minimal Failure, so perhaps he stumbles as he lands, and loses a turn as he recovers his balance.

I have to look at probabilities and such to develop a table that would standardize the Degrees, for right now I'm winging it a bit, but it seems to me that this could be a workable system.

Les Miserables Extravaganza!

2012-12-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

I am hitting a mental wall on another post I've been working on for the last week or so, so I'm going to step away from it for a moment and talk about something completely unrelated - how incredibly excited I am for the Les Miserables movie coming out in less than one week!

What's Les Miserables, you say? Really? I can't imagine that anyone is actually saying this, but on the off chance you are, it was a book by Victor Hugo that was made into a musical that took the world by storm a couple of decades ago, that is getting remade into a movie, starring Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, yeah, pretty much everybody.

It's the tale of the lives of a group of people, with the French Revolution as the backdrop. It's an emotional rollercoaster - there's love, there's loss, there's life, there's death, and everything in between. Lots of stories say that, but in this case, it is actually true.

It's also a great story to do one of those alignment chart thingies to:

I don't know that I agree with Valjean being cast as Lawful Good, I don't think there is a Lawful Good character to be found in the book (which I think might kinda be the point). But aside from that quibble, the chart speaks the truth!

It's worth noting that Javert is one of the greatest villains ever created. Proof of this can be found in the fact that people can't agree on whether he's a villain at all! That's when you know you've done Lawful Evil right!

Here's some Trailers:

And, most recently, a complete rendering of "One More Day" has been released into the wild. Get it while you can!

Operation: Mindcrime - the RPG

2012-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've had an idea percolating in my brain for the last week or so. I think it started with Edgar J's posts about how his DCC RPG adventure was based on songs by the Doors, heated up as I continue to play in Ark's Redshirts Stars Without Number game, and came to a boil yesterday as I was listening to Queensrÿche's Operation: Mindcrime. I'm going to pitch this to my group, although I have a suspicion many of them are probably unfamiliar with the album...

I Remember Now...

It's 1984, and the Cold War is in full swing. In America, it's a time of greed, paranoia and murder, awash in neon lights. Big Business, Big Government, Big Media, Big Religion - monolithic organizations are everywhere, and the distinction between them blurs more and more each day. Urban desperation grows as domestic spending plummets, the money being funneled into foreign wars to protect interests that seem to have less and less to do with the common man. The rich sit in their towers of steel and glass, their cocaine-fueled orgies keeping them blissfully unaware of apathetic to the plight of those below. Crack is just starting to hit the streets, hollowing out the ghettos. The AIDS virus is spreading like wildfire but few know and even fewer care, terrorism is still something that happens in other parts of the world, and the threat of nuclear annihilation hangs over the country like a palpable shadow. Marvin Gaye and John Lennon are dead, while Reagan and Thacher live, despite the best efforts of would-be assassins. Smoking is allowed in public buildings, but if someone offers you drugs, you Just Say No.

You're a good citizen, you believe in the American Dream, but when you look around, all you see are people and organizations perverting that dream, taking advantage of the weaknesses of others. It's gotten to the point where even someone like you can see that something is wrong, that the system is broken, that there needs to be Change.

But what kind of an impact can one person have on an entire system? The thought haunts your dreams at night. Who are you? Are you perpetuating the system by participating in it? Even if you chose not to participate, what could you realistically do? Do you even have any choice at all, or are you just playing out the part you were destined to perform from the day you were born?

Revolution Calling

Doctor X has the answer. The figurehead for a mysterious organization known as the Underground, he preaches a gospel of change. All he needs are some dedicated operatives, and he can bring an end to the insanity. He can make you certain of things again, make the world make sense again. All you need to do is join the cause. Through a series of injections and indoctrination techniques, you're able to leave the questions behind. You can rest at night again. Things make sense for the first time in a long time, and you leave your life, your job, your friends and your family behind to join the cause.

Speak

Doctor X's treatments have turned you into something more than human. You're an Operative now, one of many, a part of a Movement, dedicated to a single purpose: Change. You have been Chosen, and you have a duty - carry out the orders passed along from high above in the Underground, no questions asked. Deliver a package, kill a man, it's all the same. They call, you answer.

As time passes, though, the doubts are starting to creep back in, the edges of your certainty curling before the flame of your misgivings. You can't help but think that you've lost something along the way. Days, weeks spent in a chair by the window in your run down apartment, waiting for the phone call that will activate you, give you purpose again. Is this the best you could have done?

Then the phone rings, the voice whispers, "Mindcrime", and all the questions are washed away.

Breaking the Silence

There are whispers of operatives that have gone rogue, went crazy - Fallen. Occasionally you wonder, is it the treatment that broke them, or a fundamental flaw within themselves? Do you have that flaw within yourself? Will you Fall? You find yourself thinking of these things even while on Missions, when you should be filled with Purpose. You seek out ways to alleviate your stress between Missions. Maybe it's booze, maybe it's something harder. Maybe it's just human contact.

Regardless, you feel a void within yourself, where once you were filled, and you seek out something, anything to make the hurt go away.

Waiting for 22

As the Fallen continue to multiply, the Underground realizes that they must change their ways of doing things. Lone Wolves can only be kept on leashes for so long before they turn on their masters, and so they shift to a cell-based system. One day there was a knock at the door, and an unfamiliar face shuffled inside. Then another, and another after that. You recognized them immediately, not because you'd met them before, but rather because of the Look - the same Look that you see in the mirror every single day.

Now you spend your nights, all of you, staring at the same phone. It has a speaker attached to it now, but its purpose is the same. When They call, you answer, and you're given your Mission.

Eyes of a Stranger

You're starting to feel uneasy. It's getting harder and harder for you to make it through the day. The doubts are multiplying, and you're asking questions not only about yourself, but about the Underground. You ask, but silently, to yourself, always to yourself. You wonder - who is Doctor X? What is the Underground, and whose interests do you serve, really? Are you creating Change? And if so, what is that change creating? You think that maybe, some of the others might be thinking the same thing, but you don't dare ask them, because what if it's just you? Have you Fallen? Are the haunted looks in their eyes signs that they're just as desperate as you, or are they waiting for someone to reveal themselves? What if they're only here to root out the Fallen before they Fall?

Every morning, you see yourself in the mirror, and you recognize less and less of yourself, and you wonder - how long until I'm gone completely? How long until the Me that I remember is gone?

Anarchy-X

From a system perspective, to make things easier, I'm thinking of running it using Sine Nomine's Stars Without Numbers ruleset. Obviously, no psychics, you're either a warrior or a specialist, and no Tech above Level 3. Further, some of the Background packages won't make sense in this setting either, but I think there's enough in there to make this work. I may write up a few new backgrounds to fit the game more solidly into the setting, but for now the only things I'm adding are two Attributes and a Skill.

Attribute - Purpose. This represents your level of indoctrination. The higher your score, the greater your devotion to the Underground, and the more willing you are to do what is asked of you, without question. Your Purpose is what gets you up in the morning, keeps you going during the day and allows you and your party to work together. Your natural inclination is to be alone, to work alone, but your Purpose unites you.

Attribute - Sanity. Doctor X's treatment works, but at the cost of the mental health of the subject. The treatments are sandpaper, working the wood of the subject's mind to get it to conform. Every time a subject is forced to do something that runs counter to their nature, they lose a bit of who they were. The Sanity attribute is rolled with 1d12+2, rather than 3d6 - the Underground doesn't pick people they can't control - only those who are already unstable are chosen.

These attribute scores should never be shared by the players with each other, nor should the results of any rolls associated with these attributes - these should be between the player and the GM. None of the party should ever be truly sure of where the loyalties of their compatriots lie.

Mechanically, the Purpose attribute should always be rolled before Sanity, and the Purpose modifier subtracted from the Sanity Score. So if you have a -1 modifier to your Purpose attribute, add it to your Sanity Score. Conversely, your Sanity modifier is always applied to Purpose checks.

Skill - Relationship - Yeah, I know it's not technically a skill, but it fits within the context of what I'm going for. Your relationship is the grasping hands and last few breaths of a drowning man. It's what you use to remind yourself that you're human. A friend, a family member or a lover, your relationships act as a bulwark between you and Doctor X's treatment, a tenuous link between who you are and who you were. Your skill level reflects the intensity of this relationship, for good or for ill (not all relationships are necessarily good ones). Your score in the relationship can be used to modify a Sanity or Purpose check once per hour. This skill cannot be chosen as an initial skill for any character, it must be developed as progress. Further, the skill can be lost, and the loss of that relationship can be deadly. A loss of access to a relationship results in a permanent loss of 1d3 Sanity points.

"Mindcrime" is the keyword, implanted in every member of the Underground. When the PC is activated, they should make a Purpose check. Again, to reiterate, the result of the check should not be shared with other PCs. How you proceed on your mission should be determined by how you roll. If you pass the check, your goal is the success of the mission. If you fail the check, the choice is yours - do you carry on with the mission, or do you try and undermine it, somehow? Either way, you must keep up appearances, for fear that the other members of your party will turn you in to your superiors.

Any Purpose check that succeeds by 5 or more points results in a loss of 1 Sanity point. This is permanent. For example, if the difficulty of the Purpose check is 10, and a 3 is rolled, the character loses 1 point of Sanity.

If a character's Sanity level reaches zero, they snap. How that happens is up to the player, but it should be consistent with the character's background, and how they have been played up until that point. It need not be an instantaneous action, they may continue to try and hide within the group, but it should be increasingly obvious to the rest of the party that something is wrong.

The Mission

Murder, infiltration, robbery, assassination, you do what you're told, in the name of a better tomorrow. But who's better tomorrow will end up being shaped? That should always be ambiguous. You don't know your superiors, you can't trust the members of your cell, you can't even trust yourself.

The main themes of the game are Identity and Change. Here is a list of questions that should be asked as the game progresses:

What is the nature of the organization you're working for?
It promises Change, but what type of change?
Can it accomplish that Change?
As bad as things are, is change inherently good?
Who are you?
Are you the master of your own destiny, or have you turned it over to the Underground?
Will you ever break free of your conditioning, and even if you do, will there be anything left of your old self?
At the end of it all, will you be sane enough for anyone to believe what you've got to say?

Why Am I Here, and For How Long?

The Underground recruits all types of people, from all walks of life. Police Officers, ex-military, office managers, receptionists, artists, doctors, scientists, accountants, priests, the homeless, there is room for everyone in the Underground, and they all serve a purpose.

Sample characters:

Nikki - A heroin addict and would-be political radical frustrated with contemporary society, he was manipulated into joining a supposed secret organization dedicated to revolution. He will beat, rob or kill anyone, if they only ask nicely, and promise him a full needle when he's done..

Sister Mary - At the age of 16, she ran away from home, and ended up working live S&M shows in Times Square, until she was taken in by Father William, an associate of Doctor X. A member of the Our Lady of Pain Cloister, she does the bidding of the Underground. She's quick with a knife, but she knows that violence isn't the only way to get a job done - sometimes a caress can wound just as deeply as a blade.

Joe Palumbo - Until recently, he was Officer Palumbo, but he had a temper, and a bad habit of beating the suspects. Folks looked the other way when it was junkies that he was smacking around, but when he put the hurt on a suspected child murderer who also happened to be the heir apparent to the Lockwood fortune, he was kicked off the force, and Lockwood went free. It didn't take much convincing to get him to sign up.

Dr. Adam Peterson - Angered by the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical companies to fund research into a groundbreaking cure for the disease that killed his wife, he began looking into the whys and wherefores, and found that the problem was even larger than he had thought. The government, the companies, they were all in it together, and the media kept the story quiet. Now he works from the inside, gathering information for the Underground, making sure they know what's going on, and when.

Dogman - Nobody ever pays attention to Dogman. Dogman lives on a heating grate at the foot of the Billings Building. Every day, he watches the rich and powerful go in and out, laughing and clapping each other on the back as they celebrate their success. Nobody knows that Dogman has a photographic memory. Nobody except the Underground. Now he collects license plate numbers and faces, and every once in awhile, he does a little more for them. If the cops ever found his stash of trophies, he'd be in big trouble.

But nobody ever pays attention to Dogman.

John van Meeter - John had a family. He had a good job. He had a home, and a dog, and he was happy. But the company he worked for was testing drugs on the unsuspecting populations of third world countries, and they got caught. He lost his job, and his wife, and his kids, and his home and his dog, and now John doesn't have anything.

Having nothing to lose makes him a perfect candidate for the Underground.

Spreading the Disease

Further resources to aid in getting the "feel" of the setting:

Visual:

Music Videos from Operation: Mindcrime - straight from the source

Revolution Calling

Operation Mindcrime

The Mission

Suite Sister Mary

I Don't Believe In Love

Eyes of a Stranger

Pink Floyd's the Wall - Ever wondered what a descent into madness looks like? I think it's safe to say that Operation: Mindcrime owes quite a bit to the Wall. It's thematically similar, and there are passages from the album that seem to be lifted almost whole cloth. You can't have one without the other, so if you're not familiar with both, familiarize yourself.

Wall Street - the greed and excess of the 80s, encapsulated in two hours.

Cobra - pure Stallone cheese, but it's got the gritty 80s vibe down pat, and the cult is pretty creepy, what with the axes and all.

Falling Down - Not 80s, but a good look at how a normal, average citizen becomes fed up with society

Basic Instinct - Another one technically not in the 80s, but close enough

Print:

Just about anything by Bret Easton Ellis - yes yes, American Psycho, but there are other works that are more relevant here - Less Than Zero and the Rules of Attraction in particular. If you're the tl;dr type, there have been movies made of all three, but I'd recommend the books over the movies.

The Punisher MAX - an adults only version of the Punisher, written by Garth Ennis. Not the Marvel Knights version (although that is great, just not relevant), the series after that. Two story arcs in particular stand out - In the Beginning is a tale of obsession and murder, while The Slavers shows the depths of depravity capable of those with power.

The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon - The 1962 movie is worth watching, if only to see sweet old Angela Lansbury portray one of the most terrifying female villains of all time, but I'm putting it here because the book is much more of a psychological thriller. Sergeant Shaw is a bit of a jerk even before he's turned, and never fights too hard against his programming, but it's an interesting look at brainwashing from the inside.

The Atrocity Exhibition, by JG Ballard - Years ahead of its time, if you don't know, now you know.

Music:

Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime - obviously.

Pink Floyd - The Wall - Yep, again. The album is different from the movie, and they're both more than worthy.

Joy Division - Closer - released two months after Ian Curtis' suicide, the album was influenced by the Atrocity Exhibition, listed above, and is every bit as nihilistic as you might imagine.

Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - it has a little more sardonic humor than I'm shooting for here, but the message is there, and it's potent.

SWN Session Report: Sci-Fi Makeover Edition

2012-12-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

I ended up last night's session 350 xp points shy of ascending to a Level Four Specialist. My griping was rewarded by Ark saying, "Okay, you do the writeup for the session, and I'll top you off."

So here we go. The following description is based on notes taken in session by Adelaide, and relayed after the fact.

Waking up yet again from their frozen slumber, the Redshirt Brigade bravely puked their guts out, while they received their new orders - to go to a planet and take over a ship. Through some sort of consensus that did not involve the majority of interested parties, their newly acquired ship was named, "Molten Rain". Because the crew had also acquired an AI on their last mission, another AI was sent by homebase because they didn't trust the newly acquired AI.

Yeah, I didn't quite get that one either, but I wasn't there for it, so I'm sure there was more to it. Whatever - New PC! WOOHOO!

As they finished puking, they pulled up to the planet, just in time to see the ship cruising around the surface, with a gorgeous woman in tow, water skiing along behind.

The ship looked like this:

The woman looked like this:

Owlicious scanned the girl, and determined that not only was she human, she had a chip in her head, much like the chips recently acquired by the group. There was much hacking, as they first tried to hack the woman, then the ship. They managed to piss off the AI controlling the ship, which hacked the Molten Rain (is it stuck in your head yet?). As it turns out, though, this was a good thing, since the asshole AI from the last session had stowed away on the ship, hoping to twirl its moustache, stroke its cat and take over the world.

After an epic hacking war, the rogue AI was shoved into a thumbdrive, jettisoned, and then blown up for good measure.

Having shown their prowess, the party was invited to the ship for dinner. There was much anxiety and fussing over what everyone would wear, never having been invited to a dinner party before. The outfits that were finally settled upon were as follows:

Owlicious:

Kal Kek:

Desmond:

Dr. Ramesh Ramapudi:

Gustav Adler:

Five:

AI Jericho:

Yes, it was a very fancy dinner party. The party was greeted by Yvonne, the woman shown above who had been water skiing. It turned out that she was the Pepper Potts to the owner of the ship's Tony Stark. Being a knockout was just a bonus.

They were lead to a dining area where she sat down and began to sing, "Fly Me to the Moon". Professor Ramapudi, realizing that he knew that song, sat down next to her and began to sing along, before segueing into a rousing rendition of Tunak Tunak Tun.

In a stunning coincidence, it turned out that Yvonne was very familiar with the song, and summoned holographic images of herself and Professor Ramapudi, and the dining area became the set of a Bollywood movie for a moment, as dozens of Ramapudis and Yvonnes danced and sang together (but never kissed!).

Needless to say, Professor Ramapudi was smitten.

Dinner was served as the host, Charles Shuttleworth (of the Asgard Shuttleworths, naturally) entered. As it turned out, he was a really nice guy, not even seeming to mind as Professor Ramapudi played footsie under the table with his Gal Friday. Conversation was made, and both AIs decided they liked him more than they liked the government they were (supposedly) working for, and decided to submit resumes with his HR department. "Doc" Davies woke up at that point and shuffled in, joining the party.

After a delightful evening, Yvonne showed everyone to their rooms, then showed Professor Ramapudi to her room. Nudge nudge, wink wink, knowwhatimean, knowwhatimean? A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh squire?

"Doc" Davies and Owlicious got tanked on margaritas, the AIs wandered the hallways of the ship looking for the HR Department, and everyone else had a restful night's sleep. Unfortunately, they were awoken by Lt. Five, who had a message from their commander, wanting to know their status. Lies were told, promises made, and commanders were gotten off of collective backs.

That unpleasantness taken care of, the decision was made that, rather than assault this really nice guy and steal his ship, they would try and negotiate with him, to see if he would sell them a ship or two. Or perhaps a neutron bomb or something. The group found Mr. Shuttleworth and went on a tour of the ship, which was full of super high tech goodies, which he passed out like candy at Halloween. Over lunch, the conversation was lively - he disclosed the secret to making psychics - good breeding stock, and conception in hyperspace. The party stored that piece of knowledge, then prodded him for more information. He had a fondness for miniaturized sharks and whales that he grew himself, much like he had grown the ship upon what they sailed. Naturally the party's collective ears perked up. Finally, the topic of trade is broached. As it turns out, Shuttleworth's tech was far beyond anything the party could offer to trade with him, with one, small, exception.

He wanted people.

Specifically, he wanted more psychics.

Thinking back to the vast numbers of Redshirts on ice back at homebase, and the lack of regard for humanity that such an arrangement implied, they told Shuttleworth that it was very likely that their masters would have no problem trading a few thousand psychics for a level ship battleship.

Thus reintroducing the slave trade to the future. Yay!

As it turns out though, while temporarily enslaving soldiers in ice before sending them out on random, arbitrary reasons is well within the Aquila Union's comfort zone, letting other parties do it with their people is out of bounds. The commander was iffy on the whole deal, but promised to run it up the flag pole to see who would salute.

Meanwhile, Professor Ramapudi bid farewell to the beautiful Yvonne, as the Redshirts went back into storage........

Fumetti Modules?

2012-12-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about fumetti lately, or rather photonovels. They've fallen out of favor lately, in all likelihood because of their association with pornography, but some of the old pulp fumettis were really great. I remember my father taking trips overseas when I was a kid, and bringing some home. I was fascinated by the merging of a comic book layout with B-Movie sensibility.

Recently, this has gotten me to thinking - has this sort of visual styling ever been applied to RPG modules? My recent trips into the wilderness have got me thinking that maybe it's possible? Certainly from a setting perspective, why not include a photo of a location that resembles the area that you're describing? While it's true that people look better in outfits that have been drawn than put on, it seems to me as though this could be done. With the capabilities that Photoshop brings, how hard is it to make your pictures fit the story you're trying to tell?

I may be crazy here, but it seems to me it could work? Maybe not on an ongoing basis, but at least as a one-off?

A Comedy of Errors

2012-12-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

I ran my first DCC RPG game, taking the group on a trip through the meat funnel. I've played a bit of DCC RPG, but this was my first time running it, and I think it went fairly well. The party certainly took the "You're no hero" bit on the back cover seriously.

Things started off innocently enough, a farmer came running into town, looking a bit scorched, talking about an earthquake having opened a crevasse in his cornfield, and how it was spewing forth flame spitting little creatures. The village elders drew lots, and the 16 party members became the official militia.

They set off to the farm, and encountered a pair of the little jerks fornicating in the cornfield. They slew them, but lost 2 of their own in the process.

It had begun.

Honestly, they were more deadly to themselves than the monsters. Two particular instances proved deadlier than any demon of the depths I could conjure.

1. Pitpocalypse

The party were crawling through a tunnel with an extremely low ceiling, when they encountered a giant white tunneling worm. It saw them and dove downwards, creating a gap they had to cross. The lead party member tied a rope to his ankle, and they crossed, one by one. Agility check to make it. If you fail, a luck check to grab the rope before you fall, but then the person on both sides of the gap needed to make a Strength check to keep from getting pulled in by the weight. All was going swimmingly, until the very last person, Sorcia, the wannabe Witch. She failed the Agility check but passed her Luck check. Petunia, the urchin who had collected vast quantities of corn from the field and was presumably distracted by her newfound fortune, failed her Strength check, and was yanked into the pit as well. The lead character with the rope tied around his ankle, had his leg jerked from beneath him and fell forward, taking enough damage to kill him, presumably as he smacked his face into the ground, driving his nose into his brain and sending the body sliding back through the rest of the group taking them with him as he slid into the pit. This set off a chain reaction, as one party member after the next tumbled into the pit. Altogether, almost a full third of the party was lost in what became known as, Pitpocalypse.

2. Piqued Oil

Again, the party's fault more than mine. Faced with an overwhelming force of Imps, they decided to break out a flask of oil and go for an area attack. The PC wanted to take it from another PC, light it and throw it. I said that was too many actions for one round, so he got clever. Making use of his multiple PCs, he comes up with the idea, "One PC takes it from another, hands it to another PC who lights it, who hands it to another who throws it." One action each, voila! While I grumbled, I couldn't argue the logic, and so the flask was passed, lit and thrown. And they fumbled. Checking the table, it seemed that the weapon was faulty. There was a crack in the flask, and as it had been passed around the party, it had left a trail of oil behind it. When it was lit, a conflagration enveloped the party, and even more died a horrible, flamey death.

Other choice quotes from the evening:

The book contained secrets not meant for the eyes of a baker...
What's a gongfarmer?
Okay, so what's nightsoil?
I take the helmet off of the dead orphan
We've all had our fun eating human flesh, but now it's time to move on
C'mon, of course I can sneak! Haven't you heard the expression, "Silent as a barber"?
I make sure to have my Vampirella outfit on when I perform the ritual

There were plenty of memorable moments as they banished the evil god. There was poor Omar, the gangsta baker who ended up a hissing, light-sensitive, lizard tailed, crab clawed creature before finally being put out of his misery, there was the barber named Seville, the very manly Florence, with her buzz cut and rat tail haircut, Kaye's Dire Halfling, ah yes, memories...

They've all hit level one, except for Kaye, so much of the hilarity of zero level adventuring is gone, now we get to the serious stuff.

More on this group as it develops...

Curse the Player, Not the Character

2012-11-29T10:11:00.000-08:00

****Warning - If you Haven't played Bioshock, this post may contain spoilers which will severely inhibit your enjoyment of the game. Turn back if this sort of thing concerns you - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED****

I'm a huge fan of Bioshock. I think it might be my favorite video game, no scratch that, I think it might be my favorite game period. In general, I don't play first person shooters. I find them dull and repetitive, and the idea of lining your sights up on a two pixel tall figure to try and kill it before it kills you just doesn't appeal to me. I heard good things about Bioshock, though. A horrific first person shooter with philosophical overtones? Well sign me up!

It did not disappoint.

It was horrific, it played with the ideas of Ayn Rand, it presented you with serious questions of ethics and morality. Oh yeah, and you blew stuff up. The thing that sealed the deal for me, though, was THAT PART. If you've played it, you know what I'm talking about, if you haven't, seriously, this is your last chance to turn back.

Okay. So when it turned out that you had been doing the bidding of the bad guy, not your character, but YOU YOURSELF. You, lulled into complacency by video game tropes, not even thinking about what the missions were accomplishing, were mind controlled just as much as your avatar by faceless being with a sunny sounding brogue and a, "Would you kindly..."

Mind. Blown.

Seriously, I put down the controller, and, all alone in my apartment, said out loud, "Damn. DAMN."

I can honestly say that is the only time that a game, video or otherwise, has had that kind of impact on me. So before I continue, hats off to 2K Games.

Now, to the point. I got to thinking, how to replicate that experience in an RPG? Specifically with regards to cursed items. Traditionally, in games that I've played, when somebody gets a cursed item, it usually goes something like, "Bad news, bro. That sword you picked up has a -1 modifier, and you can't ditch it until you find a priest."

Fair enough, that's accurate, but that's a player's description, and draws a bold line between the player and the character. Whenever I can, I'd rather blur that line, and force the player into the mindset of the character, so why not mess with the players a bit, rather than just the characters? Here are a couple that have come to mind.

Bloodthirsty Weapon

This one is a direct homage to Bioshock - the weapon appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a weapon of speed, allowing the user to strike first in combat. Who wouldn't want to use that weapon? It works fine, doing just what it says on the tin, until the party finds itself in a social setting, when the weapon leaps into the hand of the person who has been wielding it, and it strikes at the nearest noncombatant NPC. That's when you realize the weapon has been controlling you all along, not vice versa.

Weapon of Misdirection -1

This sword radiates strong magic, and the DM should tell the person wielding that it is a +3 weapon. Then, simply increase any foe's defense/AC/whatever by 4, without telling the player. If the player gets frustrated and tries to switch weapons, the DM secretly rolls a Wisdom check/saving throw/whatever. If it's failed, the character thinks they have switched weapons, while still holding the same cursed weapon. If they pass the check, they realize the weapon is cursed.

Deck of Many Curses

See who the degenerate gamblers in your group are. It's a Deck of Many Things, with all the good stuff taken out. With unlimited draws.

Ring of Inner Truth

Ring of +1 Wisdom, but at the GM's discretion, table talk is actually spoken aloud by the character.

Tent of Paranoia

This tent aids in the healing of the characters, and is big enough for the entire party. Any who sleep within it double their normal healing. For the following 24 hours, however, all NPCs appear to be monsters or other demonic creatures. Any speech will be heard as threatening, and movements observed will promise violence. The illusion persists until they are dead, at which point their true form is revealed. Actual monsters and other demonic creatures appear and act as normal.

The point is, you're the GM - nothing says that you have to be a reliable narrator! It's something gamers tend to take for granted, but it doesn't have to be that way - keep them on their toes and make them question everything!

The Harrowing pt II - Wrapping Up

2012-11-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

First off, an apology - I was truly a lazy blogger yesterday, copying and pasting the article from Wikipedia, and the God of Sloth cursed my work, with horrible formatting that I didn't even check! I've reformatted yesterday's post, so if you were curious just what in hell I was talking about, now you can know.

So, down to business. I set out this month with lofty goals, and as the month winds down, I can look back and say that the the results were decidedly.... mixed.

I was able to blow through the Risus One Page Challenge entries with little problem. Both of my submissions can be found here. I'm a bit proud of both of them, even if they both leaned a bit more towards post-apocalyptic than steam punk. It was a fun exercise.

NaGaDeMon is next. I started off the month designing a board game, sort of like Axis and Allies, but with less of an emphasis on military strength. The game has evolved, and is now a card game. There are 172 nations in play, and much like during the Cold War, escalation is everyone's enemy, and the nuclear Damocles Sword hangs over all players. Convince the people to rise up, buy them off or just invade and take them over, there are many different ways to secure world domination, but if you invest too much of your resources, you may succumb to forces at work on the home front. I've been working with someone I know to turn this into a real thing, and while there is zero chance it will be anything close to playable by the end of the month, it's real. It's going to happen. So while I failed the NaGaDeMon challenge, something good has come of it, for sure.

NaNoWriMo. This was always going to be the longshot, and lo and behold, I didn't quite make it. Actually, it would be fairer to say that I bombed out spectacularly. I held through the first week, missed one day and never recovered. But hey, I now have a quarter-finished novel under my belt, so I can go back and peck at it sporadically. I also learned that the "Don't edit, just write" is impossible for me to do. Literally. Impossible.

The Clockwork Cave continues to slog along. In an interesting twist though, a sort of "mini-game" that I designed as a part of the adventure has mutated (heh) into the core mechanic for From the Ashes. I'm actually quite pleased with it, and I think it fits the system not only mechanically, but spiritually, as well - it enhances the idea behind the game.

So that's pretty much it. The easy stuff was easy, the hard stuff was hard, I made some progress, fulfilled some goals, left some undone. Pretty much life, yeah?

Real Life Adventurers: Bill Tilman

2012-11-27T12:31:00.000-08:00

Taken from his wikipedia page:

Major Harold William "Bill" Tilman, CBE, DSO, MC and Bar (14 February 1898–1977) was an English mountaineer and explorer, renowned for his Himalayan climbs and sailing voyages.

Early years and Africa

Tilman was born on 14 February 1898 in Wallasey in Cheshire, the son of a well-to-do sugar merchant John Hinkes Tilman and his wife Adeline Schwabe (née Rees). He was educated at Berkhamsted Boys school. At the age of 18, Tilman was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery and fought in the First World War, including the Battle of the Somme, and was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery. His climbing career, however, began with his acquaintance with Eric Shipton in Kenya, East Africa, where they were both coffee growers. Beginning with their joint traverse of Mount Kenya in 1929 and their ascents of Kilimanjaro and the fabled "Mountains of the Moon" Ruwenzori, Shipton and Tilman formed one of the most famed partnerships in mountaineering history. When it came time to leave Africa, Tilman was not content with merely flying home but rode a bicycle across the continent to the West Coast where he embarked for England.

World War II

He later volunteered for service in the Second World War, seeing action in North Africa, and on the beaches at Dunkirk. He then was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to fight with Albanian and Italian partisans, was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his efforts, and the keys to the city of Belluno which he helped save from occupation and destruction.

Mount Everest & Nanda Devi

Tilman was involved in two of the 1930s Mount Everest expeditions - participating in the 1935 Reconnaissance Expedition, and reaching 27,200 feet without oxygen as the expedition leader in 1938. He penetrated the Nanda Devi sanctuary with Eric Shipton in 1934, and in 1936 he went on to lead an Anglo-American expedition to Nanda Devi. With the support of a team which included Peter Lloyd and H. Adams Carter, Tilman and Noel Odell succeeded in making the first ascent of the 7,816 metres (25,643 ft) mountain, which remained the highest summit climbed by man until 1950. Tilman later described their arrival on the summit:

Odell had brought a thermometer, and no doubt sighed for the hypsometer. From it we found that the air temperature was 20 °F (−7 °C) but in the absence of the wind we could bask gratefully in the friendly rays of our late enemy the sun. It was difficult to realise that we were actually standing on top of the same peak which we had viewed two months ago from Ranikhet, and which had then appeared incredibly remote and inaccessible, and it gave us a curious feeling of exaltation to know that we were above every peak within a hundred miles on either hand. Dhaulagiri, 1,000ft higher, and 200 miles away in Nepal, was our nearest rival. I believe we so far forgot ourselves as to shake hands on it.

In 1939, Tilman was the first man to attempt climbing in the remote and unexplored Assam Himalaya, exploring the Southern approaches of Gori Chen, 6538 metres, before his team succumbed to malaria. In 1947 he attempted Rakaposhi, then made his way to Kashgar to join up with Eric Shipton in a lightweight attempt on Muztagh Ata, 7546 metres, which nearly succeeded. On his way back to India, he detoured through Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to see the source of the river Oxus. During his extensive exploration of the areas of Langtang, Ganesh and Manang in Nepal in 1949, Tilman was the first to ascend Paldor, 5896 metres, and found the pass named after him beyond Gangchempo.

Sailing

Following his military career behind enemy lines in the Second World War, Tilman took up deep sea sailing. Sailing in deep seas on the Bristol Channel pilot cutter Mischief, which he purchased in 1954, and subsequently on his other pilot cutters Sea Breeze and Baroque, Tilman voyaged to Arctic and Antarctic waters in search of new and uncharted mountains to climb. On his last voyage in 1977, in his eightieth year, Tilman was invited to ship as crew in En Avant with mountaineers sailing to the South Atlantic to climb Smith Island. The expedition was led, and the boat skippered, by the youthful Simon Richardson. He and his crew aboard the old, converted steel tug made it successfully and without incident to Rio de Janeiro. Thereafter, en route to the Falkland Islands, they disappeared without trace - it was presumed the ship had foundered with all hands.

End of the Line

2012-11-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

My wife and I finally finished our epic road trip late Saturday night, and spent all day Sunday doing pretty much nothing. We're watching Babylon 5 for the first time, so most of the day was spent working through Season 2.

Before we left, we generated a massive, 1200 song playlist on Spotify to accompany us on the road as we traveled. I've already described one instance where the music synchronized with our experiences, but it happened again late Saturday.

We had lined up a bunch of stops for our last day, trying to squeeze as much into what was left of our time on the road together as possible. We left out of Amarillo, TX early Saturday morning, having gotten in to late the night before to get a picture in front of the Cadillac Ranch. We charged east, swinging through the Jesus Christ Is Lord Truck Stop (no seriously), stopping off to see largest Cross in the Northern Hemisphere (again, no, seriously), a a museum dedicated to the history of barbed wire (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried), the national Route 66 museum, and finally hitting the Teepee-Shaped Cherokee Trading Post as the sun was setting.

We pulled through Oklahoma City after dark, and set off down the road towards Dallas, and as we rode, Johnny Cash's turn came up on the playlist, and he sang us through the night. Ghost Riders In the Sky set my mind racing as we drove through the black plains, the tale of damned cowboys forever chasing the Devil's Herd calling to mind the tales of the Wild Hunt.

For a brief bit of time, I was free. The window was rolled down, the air was sweet and the world seemed like it went on forever, that there was nothing to hold me back, nothing to keep me from doing anything I could imagine. Ideas popped and snapped in my head like fireworks, and I could see it all.

And then... and then... the lights of Dallas started to appear in the sky. The darkness was pushed back, and I started seeing the overpasses and the buildings and the cars and the construction. It turned out my playlist had one final joke to play, one last bit of irony to share...

That isn't my favorite recording, I think the guitar line in the middle betrays the solemnity of the song, but hopefully you get the point. Honestly, though, hopefully you don't.

Epic Metal in the Land of Fire and Ice

2012-11-22T04:17:00.000-08:00

Another post from the road. My wife and I continue our honeymoon and, having left Arizona behind, are now slowly making our way back to Texas. We started off yesterday morning in Gallup, and I'm writing this from a hotel in Santa Fe. We're hunkered down here for Thanksgiving, and plan to head out again on Friday morning.

On our way out to Arizona this past Saturday, we passed by several signs along the side of the highway for something called, "The Land of Fire and Ice". Looking into it, we found that there was an exploded Volcano sitting right next to a cave full of ice that never rises above 31 degrees, no matter the temperature above.

Well, "Hell Yeah!", we said, and on our way back, we veered off of the highway to see this elemental badassery. Right off the bat, we were struck by how desolate the location was. It was twenty miles, through a national park, just to get to the sign telling us to turn off the road. From there it was another couple of miles along a dirt road, and suddenly there it was - the Trading Post. $22 later, and we were on our way. There were trails running to either side of the building, the one to the right leading to the Bandera Volcano, the one to the left to the Ice Cave.

The Trail Guide recommended we take the Volcanic path first. It's longer and steeper, and the exertion would warm us up, and then we could head to the Ice Cave to cool down. Taking the advice, we headed up the trail to the Volcano. The first thing we noticed was huge amount of lichen, covering almost all of the lava rock surfaces. According to the pamphlet we received, the formation of this primitive life is the first step towards breaking down the lava rocks, a process which occurs over a ridiculously long period of time.

As we ventured forth, we started noticing all these ridiculously twisted and evil looking trees. Apparently, it's hard for trees to put down roots in the cooled lava. It can do so, but it ends up causing the trees to look wicked.

Caves and inlet dotted either side of the trail, dark and mysterious. Some sat right by the trail, inviting investigation, while others crouched behind the treeline. Who knows where they lead? They were all the result of lava tubes cooling in different shapes

The lava fields became denser and denser, to the point where even if we wanted to leave the trail, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to traverse the landscape.

Finally we reached the site of the ancient violence, an inverted cone all that remained of the site where, 10,000 years ago, the earth itself swelled and rose up, before bursting like an infected boil, spewing liquid fire across the land.

We headed back down the mountainside, past the Trading Post and out towards the Ice Cave. The trail was easier, but more thickly wooded, and the cries of birds surrounded us as we headed deep into the trees.

Along the way, there were actual ruins to be seen off to the side of the path, with rocks arranged in specific patterns, as though indicative of ancient, perhaps blasphemous rites performed long ago, and walls, arranged to keep something, or some things, out.

Snow began to dot the landscape as we descended, with patches appearing hither and yon, and small entrances to caves appearing along the path. This was but a preview of what was to come.

Finally, we came upon the entrance to the cave, the rocks hanging over the entrance menacingly. As we descended, the rocks took on a greenish hue, as more and more moss was attracted to the moisture in the cave below.

Finally, we reached the base of the cave, where we were confronted by the ice itself. It's estimated that the first bit of ice was created down here almost 2,000 years ago, by uncertain means. Since then, it has become a self-perpetuating system, with the existing ice keeping the temperature low enough that rainwater that runs into the cave is turned to ice, and so on. The moss and lichen in the area has given the ice its signature greenish hue.

The back of the cave was inaccessible, but hinted at dark mysteries hidden in its unseen depths.

At this point, we headed back down the trail, picked up a few post cards at the Trading Post, and jumped back into the truck. As we started back towards the highway, we took in the desert around us, the mountains looming in the distance, the wind howling across the vast expanse, and, as if on cue, the most epic song on one of the most epic albums of all time made its way to the top of our playlist, To Wander the Void, by While Heaven Wept. Between this song, and the sights I'd seen, things began to percolate in my brain.

The album has art by John Martin for its cover, so you know it's gonna be awesome, but check out the lyrics:

A million miles from everything the emptiness is everywhere

The lone and level sands stretch as far as I can see

Nothing but the hollowed eyes of skulls and ancient bones despair

Remains of those who wandered this wasteland vast before me

Fatigue and famine render every step a tribulation

Beneath the blistering sun sabulous winds just a mockery

Lost within an infinity of dust and desolation

The vultures circling overhead await my lonely expiry

Maintaining this course to nowhere I have traveled so far

Far beyond the valley's carnage and death's silent repose

Compelled to journey onward by the calling of the morning star

Haunted by visions and voices, memories or madness providence only knows

I can't remember when or how I'd first lost my way

Thirsting even a tear of solace knowing naught will ever come

Siren celestial have mercy on me allow my flesh into dust decay

And carry my soul far beyond this damned and forsaken kingdom

I fell to my knees as the last trace of strength slowly faded away

With stone in throat I knew I'd never reach the hallowed and promised land

I conceded my carcass a vulture's feast, my soul eternal umbrae

Once a king, now nameless, forgotten, swallowed by the seas of sand

Yeah, it was an epic freakin' detour.

I'm In A Post-Apocalyptic State of Mind

2012-11-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

My wife and I are driving cross country, from Dallas, TX to Flagstaff, AZ on our honeymoon. We plan to see the Grand Canyon, then take Route 66 back to Dallas. We left Dallas on Friday afternoon, stayed in Oklahoma City Friday night, and made it to Albuquerque, NM late yesterday evening.

I often find that folks from other parts of the world, and even other parts of the US, don't really appreciate just how friggin' huge the southwestern part of the United States is. For instance, the only reason we drove through Oklahoma at all was because it was quicker to go up to Oklahoma City, then west to Amarillo Texas than it was to drive directly to Amarillo from Dallas. Yes, we have entire states that exist to be shortcuts through other states. After a day and a half driving, we're in our third state, but we're really only a state and a half away from where we started. Wrap your mind around that.

Further, calling stretches of our trip thus far desolate would be understating the matter. Gigantic wind turbines and cows are all that break up the scenery for miles at a time. It's mostly grassland and prairie through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, but as you get into New Mexico, it changes. The grass thins out, replaced by pockets of shrubs, and honest-to-god tumbleweed. At first, just faint outlines in the distance, you begin to see mountains rising up on the horizon, hazy blue in color. Along the sides of the road are abandoned buildings, long surrendered to nature. Texaco signs missing the X and the C, free-standing chimneys with the buildings they once warmed lying in ruin around them. As you approach Albuquerque, the mountains loom above you, when suddenly the road veers sharply to the south, going through a valley south of town before juking back up north to bring you into the sun-baked adobe homes that are scattered around the town. As the sun goes down, you can't help but think that while Big Sky Country may be Montana's nickname, it applies equally well down here - the colors radiate out from the sunset, stretching almost to the opposite horizon. The sun dips below the horizon as you enter town, and you find city colors replace it - underpasses are lit by lamps of shifting hues, from reds to blues to yellows and back again. Driving through Albuquerque at night is a surreal experience.

And of course, finding myself in Albuquerque, I can't help but think of the Albuquerque Star Port Mini-Adventure, packaged in with early editions of Gamma World. I have a soft spot in my heart for this adventure, I remember reading in the back seat of the car on a trip back when I was a kid. It was the first Gamma World adventure that I ever played, and the first one that I ever GM'd. The wonder of the adventure stays with me to this day - midway through, there's the big mindtwist, as you find out something you're exploring isn't quite what you thought it was, and suddenly you're looking at things from a very different perspective.

I've been focused on fantasy RPGs of late, but this trip is tickling a part of me that has been resting for awhile. I feel a need for some Post-Apocalyptic RPGing coming on. I need to gather some folks looking to explore the wastelands, to protect the villagers from rampaging hordes of mutants, to recover lost artifacts of the Ancients, to venture into the Bones of the Giants.

Other Dust, Mutant Future, Gamma World, hell maybe I'll even finish up on From the Ashes.

For Those About to Rock and/or Die

2012-11-16T07:35:00.000-08:00

While I understand that DCC RPG's official name for their character creation process is, "The Funnel", I have to say that I don't think that the word captures the essence, the horror, of a formative experience more akin to a meat grinder than a funnel..

Having just completed my first foray into this terrifying process, I would like to petition Goodman Games, in future editions of DCC RPG, refer to this process as the Meat Funnel.

Whether they do or not, I will henceforth refer to it as such.

In any event, of the four characters I started out with last week in Adam and Edgar's Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad campaign, only one remained last night, standing triumphant. Crag Beerbeard, heroic Dwarven Blacksmith, managed not to outperform, so much as just outlast his compatriots. He has discovered a bit of an affinity for the Longbow, ironic considering his racial handicaps, but nonetheless he seems to have taken the roll of the Deadeye Crackshot of the party, plugging several ghouls full of holes in last night's session.

Surely the Hall of Heroes will fill with many songs of praise in his honor in the future, but I'd like to spend just a moment remembering the fallen, without whom Crag would not have had his chance to shine.

Miff Sapsipper - Alas, poor Miff, we hardly knew ye. An Elven Navigator, I had the highest hopes for you. The Tank of my group of intrepid adventurer's you had 5 hit points. You were also lucky, born under the loom, which would have given you a +1 bonus to all skill checks, including thief skills. I had visions of you with your spyglass and short bow as an elite archer assassin sniper type, but unfortunately, you were a bit cocky, feeling invincible with your five hit points, and were taken down in a single strike by a lizard man in the caves. Someday, Crag will return your spyglass to your family, and tell them of your death.

Michelangelo Aggrosong - Despite your grand name, you were... well, pretty average. A human cooper with but a single hit point, no-one knows what drove you to pick up your barrel and crowbar and descend into the depths. A quiet type, you nonetheless showed some promise on the battlefield, releasing your rage as you beat at the lizard men. Unfortunately, your fearlessness could only carry you so far, and it wasn't long until you fell beneath the might of your enemies. Crag still carries your crowbar, Michelangelo, as a reminder not to get ahead of himself.

Lardo Cutpurssian - To be honest, no-one was terribly sorry to see Lardo go. A fat, sweaty merchant, he had heard that there was treasure to be had, and a large group of people to hide behind as he collected it. Quite smart, and reasonably strong, he was hamstrung by his hefty bulk, horrible asthma and a personality not even his mother could stand. Even so, he might have made it, but something he saw in those depths caused him to snap. Seeing his friends mowed down and he himself surviving, he came to believe he was blessed and became reckless, charging ahead of the party, and engaging in one-on-one melee battles. Poor Lardo, didn't you know you only had but a single Hit Point? Alas, even padded armor and a long sword couldn't save him, as he was brought down by a ghoul. The symbol of your devotion to the Merchant God hangs close to Crag's heart.

And so, his companions but memories, grains of sand on the Beach of Time, Crag Beerbeard goes forth, purpose in his stride, a spark in his eye and fire in his belly, determined to learn from his experiences in... The Meat Funnel.

Music to Create To

2012-11-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

So I've been doing a lot of writing lately, and I don't know about you, but I needs me some music to go along with any creative efforts, so I figured I'd share some of the music that gets my creative juices flowing. In general, I need music that is... open. The "busier" the music, the less room I have for my own thoughts.

That means a lot of classical music, and a lot of ambient music, so if these things are not your cup of tea, abandon hope, ye who enter here.

Adagios in general are nice to create to. Nice and slow, easy does it. This recording in particular is a favorite of mine, Karajan was an incredible conductor, and brought out the feeling in many recordings. Apropos of nothing, if he hadn't been dead, I totally would have lobbied for him to play Gandalf, btw.

Speaking of adagios, if you haven't heard this one, under what rock have you been living? Barber's Adagio is hands down one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever set to paper, and nobody captured the essence like Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. You may know the song, but if you haven't heard this recording, you haven't heard it like it should be done.

From what I understand, Thomas Tallis is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, thanks to, of all things, Fifty Shades of Gray.

Sigh.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I suppose. Tallis was doing the wall of sound thing 500 years ago, and the music reminds me of the ocean, shifting and sliding, while still being one, cohesive "thing".

Everyone knows the fourth movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony - the opening sounds like Jaws, then goes all brassy and badass. The second movement, though, is mellow, and just a bit threatening, if you know what's coming. You can feel the momentum building as you go along, while still getting a sense of stillness and peace.

Now we go to some darker places:

For some reason, Spotify lists the song above as Powler, it's actually called Prowler. It's by one of the greatest bands to ever have a ridiculously stupid name, Bohren and Der Club of Gore. They started out as a fairly generic death metal band, and then got interesting, introducing the world to the concept of Doom Jazz. It's music for the streets of a dark city, where the bar just closed and boozy patrons are slinking into the shadows, as a lone sax player stands beneath the streetlight, his music mournfully accompanying them to the grasping darkness that awaits them...

Nazi UFO Commander - the name may be silly, but the music isn't.

Philip Glass, oh Philip Glass. Candyman was terrifying enough as it was, why did you have to go and make it worse? It's not often that the music of a film encapsulates the entirety of the film as neatly as this does - haunting and beautify, simple and repetitive, it stays with you long after the film itself. As long as I'm on the topic, though, next time you watch Candyman, watch it with the idea that Helen has gone ridiculously insane and is an unreliable narrator - It was always you, Helen, takes on a very different meaning. Anyways, Philip Glass - the Candyman soundtrack is a good point of entry for anyone interested in the idea of voice as a musical instrument.

Brian Williams, aka Lustmord is the king of Dark Ambient. Pretty much any of his works do the trick, but The Place Where the Black Stars Hang one is a particular favorite of mine. If you get a chance to see him perform, you owe it to yourself to do so. His performances are wonderful and amazing and terrifying and beyond real description, just like the music itself. The album is over an hour long, and the video above has it all. Put on some good earphones, turn down the lights, and start writing.

Cancer by Panzar

Peter Andersson is a prolific dark ambient musician, with numerous projects. I could make an entire post just about his various projects - each approaches the idea of dark ambiance from different perspectives. Raison d'etre is his most well known, and approaches from an industrial angle, while Necrophorus focuses more on naturalistic ambiance Panzar is.... terrifying. The album this track is from, Human Degeneration, is, so far as I can tell, some sort of concept album about the Holocaust, or WWII in general (lots of talking in German, which I don't understand - for all I know it could be a recipe for cookies), and it is every bit as haunting, ominous and threatening as you would imagine such an album would be. To feel the full effect, you should listen to the entire album which can be heard here. This track, though, captures most of it.

Enough of the dark stuff, here are some lighter works.

Steve Reich is a pioneering minimalist, and this shows the power of his work. In this work, he takes a simple phrase, and turns it into an audio feast that will blast anything that is stuck in your head into oblivion. A good audio enema.

I recently had an opportunity to see Robert Rich perform live. He did a house tour of the world, putting on concerts literally in peoples' homes. I was one of about 25 people at the concert, my better half and I lounging on a couch. At some point my eyes closed, I was drifting, aware, but at peace. The music ended and my eyes opened and I was refreshed. It's that kind of music.

Well, I think that's enough for now. Enjoy!

Winter is Coming II - The Cave of Eternal Winter

2012-11-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

I missed the Winter is Coming Blog Carnival last year, indeed, I didn't even realize such a thing existed until I saw it over at Dice Monkey. Now I know, and it sounded like fun.

The Cave of Eternal Winter was designed for Gamma World, Mutant Future, or any other post-apocalyptic rpg.

There is a legend, whispered among the tribes of Tixus, of a cave, hidden deep among the Bones of the Giants. This cave contains the very Spirit of Winter. No matter how hot it is outside, no matter how the sun beats down upon the scorched earth, the Cave is cold enough to freeze a body solid.

Legend tells of blocks of ice within the cave that, when removed from the cave, reveal food of the ancients, mysteriously preserved through the ages. Tales are told of wondrous legendary devices within, still in perfect working order, and some whisper their fear of the creatures that lurk within the cave, emerging from the snowy depths to kill any who dare trespass.

There are darker legends, of roving wanderers who have strayed too close and were dragged screaming into the cave. Supposedly, nothing can live in its proximity. When you stop feeling the bugs on your neck, when you stop hearing the birds cawing and the creatures growling, check the wind. If you feel a chill, you've come too close!

The Cave of Winter is, in fact, an automated meat packing plant, still fully operational after centuries of abandonment. Powered by a nuclear reactor far beneath the surface, an AI controls the day to day operations of the plant. Several hundred years ago, some mutated moles were tunneling under the foundation of the facility, causing it to collapse beneath the earth, leaving only the entrance exposed.

Undeterred, the AI continued on with its final directive - to keep the plant stocked with fresh, frozen meat. It has fulfilled that directive enthusiastically, even as it has gradually lost perspective, along with its sanity. The entire plant has been converted into a gigantic frozen meat locker, and temperatures have not risen above freezing in several centuries. The robots that maintain the plant by this point have ice frozen to all non-mobile pieces of their bodies, and can be mistaken for Ice Demons. The plant has thousands of pounds of frozen meat stockpiled in various parts of the facility, and the machinery is surprisingly intact and well maintained, if a bit frostbitten.

In order to fulfill its directive, the AI will send its robots out to snatch those who come too close to the factory, and process their flesh. This results in a "Dead Zone" of approximately 1 mile around the factory. Any intruders into the factory are similarly consumed, processed and packaged.

There are currently 54 fully functional robots in the facility, which is a significant decrease from the 377 that were initially present. The 323 non-functional robots have frozen gears and joints which prevent them from moving. These can be found scattered about the facility, frozen solid.

The packaged meat is in cubes, with the label of the manufacturer, "Froztreatz" prominently displayed on the plastic wrap-like packaging.

The AI is housed in a chamber, with all the entrances frozen shut. The cold and isolation has driven it mad, and it has taken to calling itself the Lord of Winter. It has recently recognized that it is running out of space for the processed meant, and has begun using 15 of the functional robots to dig into the earth around the plant. Its plan is to expand its wintry kingdom outwards and ensure that there is a never ending supply of meat to package!

Spears of the Dawn Review, Part 1 - Pre-Reading

2012-11-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

So I backed Kevin Crawford's upcoming African-themed RPG, Spears of the Dawn. The second Beta was just released, and I wanted to take the time to review it. But first, I wanted to address something I've been wrestling with since I heard about it.

A while back, Ark posted regarding some preliminary conversations the group had about the game. In it, he mentioned my fear that it could result in some faux-pas, and while that can definitely be a concern, I hadn't really articulated my concerns very well, so I'm going to attempt to do so here.

First, an apology in advance - my knee-jerk aversion to these sorts of things comes from experiences in other media. For instance, movies set in New York have hot dogs, the Empire State Building and taxi cabs, movies in San Francisco have steep hills, movies in Russia have the onion domes and fur hats. DC Comics recently launched a comic called Batwing. Batwing was billed as being, and I quote, "The Batman of Africa". The actual execution of the comic was a parade of famine, warlords and corruption.

This encapsulates my issue with this sort of thing. There's a fine line between tropes and stereotypes, and unfortunately, while it's a trope when you have the Eiffel Tower in the background every time something is set in France, it veers uncomfortably close to stereotype when your African stories (like Batwing) are about how horrible things are there. Are there horrible things going on in Africa? Certainly. But do those experiences encapsulate existence in Africa? Probably not. It would be like if every comic or movie or whatever set in America featured people praying while they ran around shooting guns and eating fatty foods.

My point is that there's a fine line that needs to be walked in order to make something like this work right.

Let me take it a step further. I believe the reason that Dungeons and Dragons and it's iterations (I include Pathfinder here, for simplicity's sake) have been so successful is that you say, "Fantasy" to 9 out of 10 people, and they're going to reply, "Medieval Europe with Dragons", or something along those lines. For a game set in the imagination, there needs to be that shared space that exists that bridges the gap between the GM's description and the players' imaginations. In short, we rely on those tropes to get us over that chasm that is endemic of the design of roleplaying games. As we veer into ethnically specific settings, the line between a trope and a stereotype gets smaller and smaller, and the potential for problems gets larger.

The issue goes beyond that, though.

Let's say you're able to navigate the issue, and successfully avoid the tropes/stereotypes associated with the culture you're working on. What are you left with? How do you communicate to an audience that something is taking place in France without the Eiffel Tower? And even if you are able to do so, doesn't that beg the question, was it really that important that the story take place in France in the first place? What is the difference between the Batman of Africa and Batman Classic if they're both fighting the Joker on the rooftops of a nameless city?

So you're caught between a rock and a hard place - how do you give a setting a flavor unique enough to justify its existence as a viable product and recognizable enough to capture the feeling of the culture you're basing it on, without giving the appearance of pandering to the lowest common denominator (and honestly, the mid-range denominators as well) that doesn't have the intimate knowledge of the society in question that is necessary to sustain a rich and meaningful shared experience?

So that's my worry.

Now, having gotten that off my chest, let me reiterate that I haven't yet read Spears of the Dawn, and so I have no idea whether or not these fears will be justified upon actually looking at the product. I have high hopes - I'm a big fan of Stars Without Number, and given the choice I'll always prefer to see a small press RPG succeed rather than fail. I backed it, I'll be getting the hardcover, and I really want to like it, but let's be realistic here. I was also a big fan TSR's habit of setting up new, non-Medieval Europe-ish settings, and they tried to slip some more familiar, ethnically flavored settings in there. Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur and Maztica all were given the box set treatment, but none were able to generate any breakout momentum as compared to the more outlandish settings like Dark Sun, Spelljammer and Planescape. I think it's reasonable to say that they fell into that gap between too foreign and too bland.

I'm going to start going through the .pdf tonight, and I'll post again soon with my thoughts on the final result, especially as it relates to my initial concerns.

G+ Gaming

2012-11-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Ages ago, I used to game with a group that had a member who was out of town frequently. He drove an eighteen wheeler for a living, and would spend weeks at a time living in hotel rooms in one horse towns. Like airline pilots, truck drivers can't drink when they're on schedule, and there were only so many days he could sit in a room and read or watch television. So his friends, the great people that they were, jury-rigged a setup to allow him to role play with them. They hung a microphone from the ceiling in the middle of the table, and sat a speaker on the table in front of the seat where he would sit when he was with them, and he would play right along with us.

These were less technologically adept days, the phone line was analog, we took his dice rolls on faith (although the general consensus was that he rolled a suspiciously high number of critical hits compared to the rest of us), there were lots of, "Wait, what did he say?"s from us, and even more, "Could you repeat that?"s from him, and the general feeling was more like sitting on a conference call than playing an RPG, but hey - it kept him sane, it kept the GM from having to come up with in-game reasons for the guy's character's absences every couple of weeks, and it kept the group together. It wasn't ideal, but it pretty much kinda almost worked, most of the time.

Flash forward to the present, and I'm hearing about playing on g+, and the first thing I think of is all the nights spent shouting into the microphone and trying to figure out whether he said, "I hit it with my axe", or, "That pit is full of cats!"

I received lots of positive responses from my previous post regarding online gaming, so I've been keeping my eye out on g+ looking for games and my god, I had no idea there were games going on at such odd hours. A good part of it is time zones, I'm sure, but it seemed like half the games were either happening while I was working or sleeping. Then along came an opportunity too good to pass up. Edgar Johnson and Adam Muszkiewicz run a game on Thursdays using DCC RPG called the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad. They were wrapping up the first adventure, the Crypt of the Lizard King. Reading further into it, I discovered that it riffed off of Jim Morrison and the Doors, and I was sold.

Despite some technical difficulties (from what I've read online since last night, Roll20 doesn't always cooperate with the Chrome browser - switching to Firefox, check), I had a blast. I was officially inaugurated into the ranks of the experienced when Michelangelo Aggrosong, the crowbar swinging cooper fell in glorious battle, followed shortly by Miff Sapsipper, the Elven Navigator. Crag Beerbeard the Dwarven Blacksmith and Lardo Cutpurssian the merchant lived to die, er... I mean fight another day, and collected 5 xp each for their troubles, setting them on their way. The highlight of the evening was a wonderful example of Death By Treasure when another party member discovered, to their horror, that a magic helm did one point of damage per round to non-chaotic characters who wore it. He was lawful. He only had 1 hp. He died.

At three hours, the timing was just right, I had a blast, and I'm looking forward to the sequel, Slaves of the Silicon God!

Professionalism: a Rant

2012-11-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a people person!

In what I affectionately refer to as "The Real World", I manage a product line for a company. I have clients, both within the company, and the actual external clients that my company services. I'm responsible for keeping the spice flowing, as well as making sure that everyone else who depends on the spice feels good about the way that it's flowing.

So let me preface this rant by saying, "I understand, I get it - customer service is a bitch."

You very rarely hear from happy customers, because they're off being happy with the product you've provided. Unhappy customers, though, those sons of bitches will blow up your phone, hammer your IM, and email you back to back to back, over and over again. Very often, there's nothing to be done about issues that they're unhappy about - shit just happens sometimes. You can't tell them that, though, because they're your customer, and it's your responsibility to make them happy.

So yeah, I get it. Customer service is the worst part of the work I do, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

But let me back up, and tie this into the point of this post. Until recently, I did almost all of my shopping for RPGs at one a few different locations. I'm lucky enough to live in an area that has over a dozen Half Price Books within driving distance, and their stock shuffles often enough that I can usually find something that strikes my fancy most of the time when I go there. Other than that, eBay and Amazon.

Then came my introduction to the OSR, and small publishers. Then came Kickstarter. Then came the headaches.

Before I go further, let me be clear - I don't mind late product. It's only late until it's delivered, and then it's there forever. I would rather wait five years than get a half baked, crappy product that doesn't live up to the promises.

No, what drives me up a wall is lack of communication.

The first scenario that is currently driving me nuts is with not one but two projects being run by the same publisher. Their Kickstarter's "Project By" lists a company, not a person. You go to their website, and you find information about how the company was founded way back when, it's a professional looking website with a forum, etc. You see, I do my research before backing a Kickstarter, and this one passed the smell test. To my regret, I stopped at the smell test, and didn't proceed to investigate further. So the first Kickstarter funds, and the owner releases a pdf of the rules, and all is well and good. The books are on the way, he says. Soon, he says. In the meantime, he kicks off a second Kickstarter, for a companion book to the first one. Fair enough, I think, I don't want half the game, let's get them both! So I kick in for the second Kickstarter. The day before the end of the Kickstarter, the guy posts an update, announcing that a stretch goal has been reached.

And that's it.

The project funded the next day, and several weeks later, no-one has seen or heard from him. Not so much as a "Hey we made it guys!" post on the second Kickstarter page, nothing. I head over to the forum, where it appears he hasn't logged on for a month.

Now, we all want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, he's got our money, so we don't want anything else to be true. More to the point, though, I just try, as a rule, to give people the benefit of the doubt. But we're confronted with a scenario where the best we can hope for is someone who doesn't understand their customer service obligations. The worst case scenario... well, it's best not to think too hard about that one.

It's not endemic to Kickstarters, though. I purchased a product from a publisher with a fairly large presence in the OSR. I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of money on the product itself, as well as a good amount more on some supplementary items. I received an email thanking me for the purchase, and that was it. Shipping can be an issue where I live, so I always prefer tracking numbers when I order things (spoiled from my days of buying off of eBay/Amazon, I suppose). I followed up with an email, asking if tracking was available, and offering to pay more if need be. Several days passed, with no reply. I sent a followup email, and after another couple of days, got a vague reply, stating that they thought they had mailed it out, and they would have to check with someone to see about tracking. After another period of time passed without a followup, I sent another email, checking in. To date, no reply (no product either, but it's only been 2 weeks since I bought it, so I'm not prepared to get antsy about it yet)

My point with all of this is that I really am a pretty understanding customer. I don't mind waiting. I don't mind delays. I really don't. I understand that most of these "companies" are just somebody working out of a spare bedroom in their house. I get that they have lives and families and "real" jobs. Hell, I wouldn't be happy, but I'd understand, if a project completely fell through due to unforeseen circumstances. They wouldn't get my money a second time, but I'd understand - there's risk involved in any transaction, and the further removed the consumer is from the product, the greater the risk.

What I do not find acceptable is the notion that open communication is not an obligation of the publisher/designer/owner, and the right of the consumer. In the case of an out and out purchase, you have my money, and until I have the product, you are in arrears. In the case of Kickstarter, you have my money, and I am an investor. Either way, communication is a necessity.

We need to expect and demand better from the people who are running the operations that we patronize. When I went to the forum to inquire about the first issue described above, there were people on there saying, "Oh, he just does that sometimes - he's disappeared before.", like it was okay. No, I'm sorry, but it's not okay. If you're making something and giving it away for free, then absolutely, do it as you have time, at your own pace and communicate as you see fit. But once you take peoples' money and say you'll have it by a certain date, you have entered into an agreement. If you need to change the terms of the agreement, hey - you've got the product, and you've already got the money. Get it right, then get it to me. But going dark, dropping off the grid, not responding to emails is unacceptable and unprofessional.

Dwimmermount is a perfect example. Not long ago, people were calling for blood, until Tavis stepped up and started giving weekly honest appraisals of what was going on. He was transparent, he was regular and timely in his communication, and (with some exceptions) the controversy surrounding Dwimmermount has subsided as we hunker down and wait for the finished product. Tavis trusted in his product and in his audience, and at least in me, his trust has been rewarded - I will definitely trust Autarch with my money in the future. He was open and honest, and more importantly professional, in his communication and he's gained a loyal customer. Really, Tavis probably over-communicates a bit, to compensate for the lack of communication at the outset, but other projects and companies should take note - a little bit of communication goes a long way. You don't need to write a novel for your backers ever day - like I said, I get it - you have jobs, you have families, you have things that come up in life.

But I have never, in my entire life, been so busy over an extended period of time, that I was unable to respond to urgent emails.

These folks want our money, we as a community need to make them earn it.

The Man With the Iron Fists and the Rule of Cool

2012-11-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

The phrase, "Because f**k you, that's why" has become quite popular recently to explain all sorts of shortcomings in media, both written and visual. It gets used because of times when it appears as though a writer is lazy, or because an editor has cut something that is a bit more essential than they thought.

Prometheus, I'm looking at you.

What this tends to make us forget, though, is that not everything needs to be explained. Sometimes, not explaining just makes things better. I remember my first time picking up an X-Men comic, back in 1986. It was Uncanny X-Men #209. On the cover, Nimrod and Colossus were grappling with each other, and in the inside, people died. Some ended up coming back, some stayed dead, and mostly I had only vague ideas of who most of them were. There were hints dropped at things that had happened previously, and more hints regarding things to come, but it didn't feel as though it was an incomplete story. Rather than being turned off by the existence of more to the story, it drove me back to the store, first to get back issues, then to keep going, keep following the story.

Obviously, that's harder to do in a movie than in a comic book. It'll be a whole lot harder to bring me back to a Prometheus sequel, for instance, because as pretty as it looked, they strung me along for two hours, asking questions which they did not end up answering.

Which brings me to The Man With the Iron Fists. On the one hand, you can see some similarities to Prometheus. The story is that the RZA's original cut of this movie clocked in at over four hours, while the final cut is barely over an hour and a half so you know there's a lot left on the cutting room floor, and I honestly hope that at some point there is a Director's Cut released filling in as much of that as possible.

What was left, though, was a movie that functions much like Chris Claremont's issue of Uncanny X-Men. There is obviously more to this story than what is presented in the film. The difference between this and Prometheus is that MWtIF asks no questions, it simply exists. Would I love to know how/why Brass Body can turn his body into brass? Sure I would! But see, here's the thing - I'm a big fan of the TV Tropes website, and I came across a page there recently called the Rule of Cool. The idea is simply this - the limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to the element's awesomeness. So while I would like to know about Brass Body's backstory, I'm content to see him kicking ass on the screen.

All of this got me thinking about RPGs. First of all, somebody should get the RZA to make an RPG. The amount of world building that went into that film was phenomenal, which also helped it out when it came to the issues described above. It didn't feel as though we were getting less than a whole movie, so much as we were peeking through the View Finder into a realistic, fully fleshed world filled with people who existed before the movie and would continue on after.

More to the point though, we get tied down in the hows and whys of things very often. We want things to be "realistic". We want things to make sense. And yes, to a certain extent this should be true. There should be an internal consistency to things - I was perfectly satisfied with Russel Crow having a knife that spun around and also fired bullets. I would have been less so had he pulled out a plasma rifle and started launching neutron grenades at his enemies. But I don't need the answer to every single question, unless the movie explicitly asks them.

Another good example of this is in the Wire. If you haven't seen it, shame on you, go and find it and watch it. There is a character in the show, I won't spoil who on the off chance that there are people who still haven't seen it, who is presented as an antagonist throughout the show. In the last season, as a character is leaving a gay bar, in the background of a single shot, there and gone so quick you'd be forgiven for missing it, is this character. Not once in the entire series is it mentioned that he's gay, it plays absolutely no role in developing any of the many plots in the series, it's just an, "Oh, by the way..." sort of moment.

My point is, it's those sorts of moments that make a series more "realistic". Not answers, but statements that generate questions, that let you fill in the blanks. The moments that spawn discussion around the table after too many drinks - who'd win in a fight, Superman or Batman? What happened to all the other people on the wheel in Conan? Rather than frustrate the veiwer, they invite them to fill in the blanks themselves, letting them "own" the story in a small way.

WE NEED MORE OF THAT IN OUR RPGs!

It doesn't have to be, "Because f**k you, tha's why!", but rather, "Because it's awesome, THATs why!"

Not everything needs to be explained. We don't need a rule for every conceivable action that a character might take. We don't even need rules for every likely action. We don't need every spider and caterpillar codified with stats and XP awards listed in the modules. We don't need megadungeons, or sandboxes or hexcrawls. What we need is balls to the wall enthusiasm. What we need is world building. What we need are players who want to peek throug the View Finder to share in a world of someone else's creation who are willing to help breathe life into that world and watch it grow and evolve as they go. We need players who ask questions rather than demand answers, who look for reasons why instead of why not. We need GMs who are willing to be flexible, and willing to find a balance between fun and realism. We need level-set expectations from all parties, but the freedom to exceed them, and the willing to figure out how to make things work even when they miss.

Or maybe it's just what I need.

Apocalypse Watch: Here Come the Robots!

2012-11-06T04:15:00.000-08:00

\While the article admits that most of the movement in military robotics is confined to drones currently, more and more, the US military is looking at ground based replacements for fleshy soldiers.

And we all know where that leads, don't we?

Strangely enough, the designers of the non-humanoid robots seemed to have taken their visual cues from the line of Starriors toys, that I love very much..

Anyhow, here's the article - run to your local store for some 2 million sunblock now!

Post Apocalyptic SteamPunk Fantasy

2012-11-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm a day and a bit late with this, but I think I like this one better than the first one. Again, the details of the Risus One Page Challenge can be found here. It's been fun playing with the idea of steampunk. I'm not sure how true to the tropes I've been, as both of these have been more genre mashups than orthodox steampunk, but it's been a fun thought excercise.

Ozone-Powered SteamPunk!

2012-11-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

As promised, this is the first of two possible submissions to the One Page Challenge for Risus: The Anything RPG. The details of the contest can be found here. I'll post the second one tomorrow. Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

The Harrowing

2012-11-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

So I've undertaken three new projects for this month, and they may be the death of me.

First the Risus One Page Challenge. The challenge is to design a setting for Risus: the Anything RPG, and submit by November 7. I've just about completed one setting, but have been struck with an idea for a second, so I may post both here in the next day or so and solicit feedback to see which one I should actually submit. The one that's completed is a steampunk type setting, focusing on an alternate version of the early 20th century - a time of political upheaval in a society ravaged by man's obsession with ozone-powered technology. The other is more of a traditional steampunk setting, although one spurred by the death of magic in an otherwise typical dungeons and dragons setting. Decisions, decisions.

Next is NaGaDeMon - a friend and I have been tossing around ideas for a more geopolitical version of Axis and Allies, set in the cold war, and its time has come! I've resolved to actually make, and hopefully play, this game by the end of the month. We've figured out the hows, the whys and the wherefores, so at this point it's just a matter of hammering out the rules and doing some playtesting to get the mix right. This shouldn't be too hard, honestly. I say that never having designed a board game before, of course. So while I don't anticipate this taking up too much time, I fully understand that I base that on absolutely nothing.

Finally, the one that scares the crap out of me, NaNoWriMo. I banged out my first 1700 words today with little difficulty, so uh... so far so good? This is the one that I have the least confidence that I'll be able to complete, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've had an idea rattling around in my bonebox for awhile now, and this seems as good a time as any to get it out.

Of course, I'm still planning on regular updates to the blog, and I still have The Clockwork Cave that I'm making fitful progress on. I'm actually just about done with the writing part of it, I'm just stuck on how to close it out. The Mayfly Queen has a tangential role in the module, so I hope folks really enjoyed that concept, because the adventure starts there and only gets weirder!

Oh, and my new wife and I are going on a roadtrip honeymoon later on this month around Thanksgiving, and I've got a fulltime job to fit inbetween the cracks of all these projects.

So my suspicion is that I've bitten off more than I can chew, but my hope is that if I can do half of what I've set out to, I can call this a very productive month!

Dwarf-Con 2013!

2012-10-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

May 3-5.

Austin, TX.

Dwarves.

As a stretch goal for his Axes and Anvils Kickstarter, Mike Nystul announced that there would be a Dwarf-themed convention sometime in 2013, and it has gone live!

The website is up, and preregistration is open! There are a number of exciting guests who will be appearing, workshops, gaming, LARPing, you name it - it'll be there. Head on over to the con site and sign up now!

Monstrous Monday - Fear the Mayfly Queen!

2012-10-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

The Mayfly Queen:Size: Medium, Number Appearing: 1 (Unique) Armor Class: -2 Hit Dice: 14 Movement Special Attacks: 3 Damage: 1d8/1d8/2d12 + special, see below XP: 10000

Mayfly Drones: Size: Medium, Number Appearing: See Below, Armor Class: 5 Hit Dice 1-6 Movement: 12" 40" Fl Attacks: 3 Damage: 1d4, 1d4, 1d8 XP: 500

The Mayfly Queen is the progenitor god of an entire race of insect-like creatures. Although it has taken the name of the Mayfly Queen, it is not strictly female, nor is its race made up of Mayflies. Scholars speculate that it is a remnant of a previous universe, or an invader from somewhere else entirely. Planar historians have records of periodic infestations going back millenia, and while these infestations have been driven off, it has never been without cost, and the Queen herself has never been destroyed. It is speculated that the Queen's natural habitat is a place outside of time, that it worms its way into the cracks and breeds, forcing the cracks wider and wider until time itself splinters, and the hordes of the Mayfly Queen spill forth, consuming all in their path.

This begins the Mayqueen's cycle. The Queen is not native to linear time, and in order to survive in the hostile environment, the Queen must nest within the brain of a sentient creature, letting it act as a buffer. The longer the host would have lived had it not been taken by the Queen, the more energy exists to be converted. As such, the Queen typically targets the young, and sends whole detachments of its drones out to capture as many as possible. These unfortunates are wrapped up in a salival resin, and placed in storage for future use. For every month that the victim would have lived, it can protect the Queen for one day, at which point the host expires, and the Queen must find another.

Further, the Queen can use that same potential energy to create additional drones. Should she wish, she can burn through all of the host's potential energy to create 4d100 drones. A single host can spawn an entire legion of Mayfly Drones, and an infestation will typically result in thousands upon thousands of hosts. Some are kept near the Queen, allowing her to direct her Drones and replenish their ranks as they fall, while others are stuffed back into the cracks in Time, as she hedges her bets. Should she fail, there are always hosts stashed away in different places and times. Outside of time, the hosts' potential energy is multiplied a thousandfold, allowing for the Horde to reach vast sizes. These drones are not long lived, however, hence the name given to the species, and applied to the Queen. Born of potential energy, the Drones are unstable, and will typically only live for 1-2 days. They can consume the potential energy of living creatures to extend their own lifespans, however, at the rate of 1 day per victim.

Thus the Queen must constantly expand, her hordes consuming all living creatures, decimating entire planes of existence, before collapsing under the weight of their own need, or being driven back, at which point the Queen begins breeding anew, and the cycle begins again.

There are legends of a race of Eternal beings named the Aasir of the First City who appear during swarms, aiding the beleaguered defenders, but even they seem to favor containment over direct confrontations, and it appears that in certain instances, the Aasir have also been known to slaughter those same defenders, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Mayfly Queen.

The Queen itself is a bloated parasite, resembling a giant tick. It is a mottled yellowish white color, like milk mixed with pus. It has two sharp claws, and a proboscis which can also deliver devastating damage. If damage is taken from the proboscis, the target must save vs. poison or be paralyzed for 2d6 rounds. If encountered, it will almost certainly be attached to a Host, latched onto the spine of the unfortunate creature. Its proboscis will be extended through the base of the skull, extending outwards through the mouth, and has been known to communicate, indicating that it does possess some measure of intelligence. If engaged directly in combat, it will immediately burn through its host and generate a host of defenders, and will only enter combat itself as a last resort. It has both Plane Shift and Time Shift available as last resorts, each is usable only once per day.

It should be noted that there are no records of the Mayfly Queen ever having been engaged directly in combat. Whether that is because no-one has been able to, or no-one has lived to tell the tale is unknown.