This is a holiday gift for Brant, who is long-suffering.

“You can’t trust the Ordo when it comes to the occult,” she said. “That’s not a proverb, but it should be. Here’s another one: ‘You’re smarter than the Ordo thinks you are.’ Put the two of those together and you have the sort of scenario that leads, inexorably, to something like the current state of Walt Disney World.”

She paused, looking up at her audience. “Sabado would tell it differently. Of course. But if you’re worth his investment, you’ll know that already.

“Very well. Here is why Walt Disney World is a separate fiefdom, not part of Orlando, and here is why I am Prince of Walt Disney World, and here is why Sabado is Prince of Orlando. Pay attention. The quiz on stories such as these always continues for the rest of your life.

“The then Prince of Orlando, Hegelsen, found the Wyrm’s Nest that lies beneath Cinderella’s Castle in 1961. I see by your expression that you do not know what a Wyrm’s Nest is. Ask around, children; for the purposes of this tale you need only know that it is a desirable source of power. More so to the Ordo. It became a matter of some urgency for him to extend his control over this portion of land, thusly.

“At the time, this was merely undeveloped farmland. Prince Hegelsen speculated that the Wyrm’s Nest was the source of the legends of the Fountain of Youth. I find this too convenient, but I was a publicist, not a magician. Or scientist. Perhaps he was right. In any case, he immediately began to scheme to extend his official influence over the Nest.

“Walt Disney, according to the official biographies, had begun to consider a Florida resort in 1960. Perhaps a year earlier; I never recall precisely. This was certainly a matter of coincidence, as I was present in many of the early discussions about a Disney Florida theme park. Yes, at the time I was alive and in Mr. Disney’s employ.

“By 1962, Hegelsen was aware of Mr. Disney’s intentions. This lever provided a convenient means for him to claim dominion over the land on which Walt Disney World would be built; accordingly, he took measures to ensure that Mr. Disney would select this area. It was not inordinately difficult, for all the official reasons. His part was mostly arranging for local city officials to grant the concessions Mr. Disney requested. They were quite considerable.

“Now, no secret lasts. In 1965, certain other influential vampires in the Orlando area became aware of Prince Hegelsen’s intentions regarding the Nest. At that time, I am told, Orlando was the most significant vampiric city in Florida. It has, perhaps, declined since then. But at that time, it was clear that should Prince Hegelsen succeed in pressing his new claim, his personal power would appreciate greatly, and there would be no feasible opposition to his regime until such a time as he happened to enter Torpor. This was considered unacceptable.

“Also by 1965, I had entered into my current condition. This was at Prince Hegelsen’s bidding, in order to gain insight into Mr. Disney’s plans. It was arranged by a certain Mr. Sabado, who had an eye both for his own future and for appropriate balances of power.

“I will confess, since it costs me nothing to do so, that I suspect Mr. Sabado was not as entirely an independent agent as he claimed to me. My suspicion is that Mr. Sabado and Prince Hegelsen had previously arranged to position the former of the pair as a peacemaker and compromise candidate for the throne if Prince Hegelsen’s bid for the Nest was unsuccessful. Whether or not that was the intent, that was precisely what occurred.

“I had been charmed by Mr. Sabado’s intellect and keen perceptions. He spent a great deal of time in 1966 and 1967 introducing me to vampiric society, going so far as to install me as the new Mistress of Elysium in Orlando by Christmas Eve of 1967. He carefully depicted me, in a manner quite Pygmalionesque, as an apolitical master of image. His efforts were successful.

“In 1969, with Mr. Sabado’s tacit assistance, Prince Hegelsen was murdered. You might not wish to discuss that matter in detail with Sheriff Steel. Mr. Sabado’s reward for his assistance was the Princeship of Orlando; he also arranged to have me installed as Prince of Walt Disney World. This was not seen as a reward for him on the part of his co-conspirators. However, he gained an ally on his border, whether or not they realized it.

“And no, I do not intend to speak of them. Mr. Parker could tell you more; I doubt that he will.

“Prince Sabado’s other reward, of course, is that Orlando remained in Ordo Dracul hands. He has no hope of attaining the Nest, albeit he would dearly like to do so. He also has a city much weakened from what it was in his predecessor’s heyday. I think that in the end, Prince Hegelsen would have been better off had he eschewed occult ambition… but then he would not have been a true member of the Ordo, would he have? It is almost Grecian.

“I must speak to other attendees now. Your reactions to my tale have been gratifying; I thank you. I trust you will enjoy the remainder of the evening.”

• Posted by Bryant at 03:14 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (3)

Secrets work like this, right now. This is subject to change.

Possession of a Secret grants arcane power. The more people who hold a Secret, the less power it grants. If we were playing a D20 game, then you could have up to +20 in your Secret skill if you were the only one who knew a Secret. If two people knew the Secret, the maximum would be +15. Ten people? +10. And so on.

A Secret must be significant.

Secrets are defined by five elements: the secret; that which the Secret’s holder can control; that to which the Secret’s holder is vulnerable; that which the Secret’s holder can perceive; and that to which the Secret’s holder is blind. This is most often drawn as a compass rose. In the South, the element of control is at the north; the element of vulnerability is at the south; the element of vision is at the east; and the element of blindness is at the west. The North is precisely reversed. In the South, they say that Northern occultists are fools, because surely the element of vision should be positioned ahead of the Secret’s holder. In the North, they say that Southern occultists are idiots, because how can the element of control not be positioned beneath the Secret’s holder?

The Aratain Church’s Secret, which is held by all ordained Church members, is that the Church’s founder was the son of a courtesan. Aratainians thus control virtues; they have the ability to, in very small degree, inflame them and encourage them. In theory they might also dampen them. The ability is limited, since tens of thousands hold that Secret. Likewise, Aratainians are slightly vulnerable to those who exchange sex for money. The vulnerability is again limited, but nonetheless it is the practice for the cathedrals of the faith to employ non-believers as a line of defense.

Aratainians perceive money. At a touch, an Aratainian faithful can discern a small degree of the emotional content pertaining to a given piece of currency: if it was most recently part of a violent transaction, for example, the Aratainian touching it might feel some measure of that anger. Aratainians are blind to bedrooms. Their perceptions are slightly obscured in bedrooms; no bedroom, no matter how well lit, will ever seem completely clear to them.

The Mayor of Vain’s Rest holds a Secret which will not be revealed. He is the only holder of this Secret. He has control over the undead; he can call them up, or dismiss them, as he sees fit. This is balanced by his vulnerability to those of Geoffery Vain’s lineage. It is no wonder that he allows a representative of the Banegard to recruit in his town. His perceptions extend out over the entirety of Vain’s Rest, but he is nearly blind once he leaves the gates.

• Posted by Bryant at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

The Drunken Magistrate is one of many taverns in Vain’s Rest. There is nothing unusual about it. There’s a common room where people drink and eat, and perhaps six bedrooms up above. One can sleep in the common room, too, but one’d best count on being woken up early. The stable is not particularly good, and there is no dedicated stable boy. There’s a musician or two most nights.

Ba Juerun owns the place; his daughter Nuru waits tables, and his wife Audu cooks. His son, Chanc, does whatever needs doing.

Every neighborhood tavern has regulars, and one would expect a subgroup of those regulars to become the unofficial arbiters of the tavern: those looked to in a bar fight, for example. You (yes, you) are the people who use the Drunken Magistrate as a place of business, a place to pass judgment, and a home away from home.

• Posted by Bryant at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

The Banegard was founded by Jacob Sloth, some two generations after the Maiden Broke. His purpose was to provide a bulwark against evil in the world, one not dependent on the politics of Oratain or the religious strictures of any church. His departure from the Army of the West was not entirely amicable, but since he was perhaps the best general of the age and since he brought much of his support staff with him, Oratain chose not to obstruct his passage.

Banegard Tower was shaped as an educational institution as much as it was as a fortress. Marcus Greary, Jacob Sloth’s academician, designed the Tower as a source of knowledge. He believed that by giving freely to the nations and states of the North, Sloth’s new army would gain the gifts of manpower and support in return. As such, he spared no expense in hiring academicians and military experts, and opened the Military School at no cost other than five years of post-education service or the equivalent.

The cost to Sloth’s personal fortune was immense for several years. However, after the youthful Banegard defeated a significant force of otherkin at Travin’s Gulch, mere hours from the borders of Main Gauvin, Queen Pomfray of Oratain made peace between her reign and Jacob Sloth. From then on, despite occasional grumbles from some noble families, Banegard Tower has been a fixture of the North and well-regarded for its efforts both public and private to maintain the safety of the entire region.

Currently, Banegard Tower is a recognized ally of every significant entity in the North excepting the Warlock Cities. While the Cities are not, of course, overrun by inimical forces, many assume that their safety is due to dark pacts; the Banegard might well otherwise be necessary. The Tower is governed by Arren Sloth, a direct descendant of Jacob. Jacob’s line has remained strong.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Vain’s Rest is located at the border between the North and the South; it’s a border delineated by nature, not by man. To the north, green hills and white mountains rise to the horizon, and farmers trade stories of children stolen by the southern barbarians. To the south, the desert rolls in dunes as far as the eye can see, and the cultured gentlemen of the jeweled cities discuss the ways in which the northern barbarians can be cozened.

Vain’s Rest is a city of exiles. The Broken Maiden lies too close, and if nothing else cemented Vain’s Rest as a place where few live by choice, that would. But even before the Maiden Broke, Geoffery Vain’s last resting place was a dangerous town full of those who respect no borders, not even those laid down by the gods. It is where you come to do business with the other realm that cannot be conducted by embassy or official means. It is a place where law does not stretch, just as Vain intended centuries ago.

There are several powers and perhaps Powers in Vain’s Rest. The office of Mayor has been passed from competent man to competent man for some time, and until the Mayoral Secret is lost, that seems likely to continue. The Vainites know Geoffery Vain’s resting place, which may or may not hold power, but their temporal power alone is significant in any case. There are other cults and religions, more by the year. A recruiting officer for the Banegard lives in the center of town, and does not interfere with anyone often. There are always rumors of Kingsmen and perhaps Calanian envoys, but that’s true of almost every town in the world.

Ten thousand people. Regrettably, too many of them are exceptional for comfort.

• Posted by Bryant at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

• Vain’s Rest
  • Vainites
  • Geoffery Vain
  • Drunken Magistrate
• Broken Maiden
  • Untamed Lands
  • The Untamed
• The North
  • Order of Hermetics
  • Banegard Tower
  • Oratain
    • Kingsmen
• The South
  • Trader’s League
  • The Yuanya Emirate
  • The Camel Tribes
  • Free City of Calain

• Posted by Bryant at 01:50 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

I’m gonna count Orlando Trash as a successful campaign at this point, which means I’ve run two successful campaigns. Maybe three if we count the Iowa City Vampire campaign; it’s vanished in the mists of time for me, but I think we didn’t go more than five or so sessions. Regardless, everyone’s enjoying Orlando Trash and I still get compliments on Huey Long’s Men of Action, so definitely successes.

Okay. Two is not enough for a trend analysis if I was being a scientist, but I’m being a GM.

I get into running games with larger than life PCs. I like running for PCs who can affect the world; I tend to want them to be close to very important NPCs, without a lot of layers of bureaucracy between them and the authorities.

In both games, the PCs have wound up as operatives of the ruling powers, while still maintaining a strong degree of independence. I’m not sure if this is an inherent tendency or if it’s just a convenient frame. That’s something I’d like to play around with in my next game. Hm; if I’d ever done Whitey Bulger’s Men of Action, it would have fit that formula. Of course, Men of Action games kinda fit that by definition, don’t they?

I tend to mix action and talk. I’ll happily run a session that’s almost purely action, but I won’t run two of them in a row.

I like dumping problems on PCs. I do it for the emotional rush that I believe the players get when they resolve the problems. My goal — this is pretty much stolen from Carl Rigney — is to ratchet up the pressure on the PCs to the maximum possible before they shatter into a million pieces.

Sometimes those problems come in the form of mysteries or puzzles or conspiracies. My players seem to enjoy getting to the bottom of those. Discovery is a big emotional payoff, in my experience.

I like strong, broad archetypes. I don’t reuse ‘em over and over again; Prince Sabado is pretty much completely unlike Huey Long. There was no Sheriff Steel equivalent in Men of Action.

Some of my players read this. What else do I do a lot?

Once I chew on all this some more I’ll talk about my next game, which’ll be fantasy, and which is preliminarily named Tarnished Brass. I think.

• Posted by Bryant at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Commentary on the Sony Reader (which you can get at Borders in the Cambridgeside Galleria right now, if you don’t feel like waiting till December for it to ship online):

It’s better than any e-book experience I’ve ever had. The form factor is superb; it’s a smidge larger than a normal paperback, and much thinner. There’s very little distraction from the screen. The screen is excellent — e-ink is way easier to read than an LCD screen. The only quibble I have is the flash when you turn a page. I think it’s just how e-ink works, and I think I’ll get used to it, but it’s a tad annoying right now.

It is not a magic bullet for reading PDFs. In particular, gaming book PDFs will probably be too big to read on the screen. World of Darkness was illegible, as was everything else I tried except Dogs in the Vineyard. That PDF is formatted for smaller pages, so it’s not awful on the Reader. But it’s not great, either. The best bet for publishers who care would be to release PDFs formatted for the screen size, which may be a problem for books with lots of tables and such.

Also be aware that a lot of game publishers don’t put a rational title and author in their PDF metadata. Most users never see this; the Sony Reader relies on it for the list of books on the device. This is sort of irritating — I want to be able to click on the title of a book in the Sony Connect software and edit it. However, PDF Info allows you to edit metadata on the PC side, which solves the problem. I haven’t found a free program that does it on the Mac, although I haven’t looked very hard yet, but since you have to use a PC to get files onto the Reader it’s sort of a null point.

Yes, the Reader plugs in with a USB cable but it doesn’t show up as a storage device on the Mac. That’s a shame. You could copy files over to a SD or CF card, and then move the card to the reader, but then you don’t get the nifty categorization functions. This may not actually be a big deal to me, though. We’ll see. In the meantime, that’s why my Mac dual boots.

Since Sony is being fairly relaxed about people hacking the Reader, I expect we’ll see Mac support from the community sooner or later. See also this forum.

All in all, me and S. are very happy with ours. Light, easy to read, not too much of a pain in the ass, and yeah. It’s a rocking device even though I want native Mac support and a couple of tweaks.

• Posted by Bryant at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Spirit of the Century (which is cool, buy it if you like pulp gaming) has an interesting character generation system that reminds me a tad of Lexicon. Hm, Wikipedia has failed yet again; there’s no page for Lexicon. That one, I might actually fix. Anyway.

Spirit’s character generation is a group activity that ensures pre-play connections between characters. I think it can be played out in blog entries. Let’s try it.

Comment here with:

A concept. Pulpy concept. It’s the 30s.

A name. Pulpy name. You know.

Then write up your character’s youth, from birth to age 14. (You were born in 1900, by the by.) Talk about your character’s family’s circumstances, the size of your character’s family, how well he or she gets along with his or her family. Where is your character from? What region? How was he or she educated? What were your character’s friends like?

Also, write down two Aspects which are tied into the events of the character’s childhood or the character’s upbringing. What’s an Aspect? It’s a tag that helps explain who a character is; it’s stuff you wanna see in the game. “Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items, or pretty much anything else that paints a picture of the character.” Quick Witted, “You’ll Never Catch Me Alive,” Raised by Wolves, Champion of the Golden Temple, etc., etc., etc.

• Posted by Bryant at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Sorkin D20.

Classes: Leader, Advisor, Star, Writer, and Technician.

Toby Ziegler is a dual class Advisor/Writer. Sam Seaborn was a Writer, but in season 4 he decided to multi-class to Leader. The control room guys in Sports Night and Studio 60 are Technicians. Nancy McNally (the National Security Advisor) is dual class Technician/Advisor.

Danny Tripp is a director, which I think means he’s a dual class Advisor/Writer, emphasis on the Advisor. Hard to say, though.

• Posted by Bryant at 10:10 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Opinions: do vampires (specifically, Vampire: the Requiem vampires) leave fingerprints?

Also, what are the odds of rolling 25 ten-sided dice and not getting anything above a 7?

• Posted by Bryant at 07:01 PM | Comments (2) | Followups (0)

The Trinity Players Guide is available for free over at DriveThruRPG. It’ll only be free till April 20th, so pick it up now. Cause I wrote the section on the Orders, and it’s pretty decent.

• Posted by Bryant at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Oh, OK, Rob. Our Canadian overlord talks, and we listen.

Unplumbed Ephemeral Circus genre time. The Empire is decaying. It has always been decaying; it will be decaying for millenial. Nobody remembers the time when it was not, except perhaps the positronic computators that remain. They grind equations into dust for purposes that were set back when the Empire was bright. It is rumored that a man knows how to change those purposes; that legacy was passed down in his clan from mother to son, from uncle to niece, and cannot be used until the time is right.

The Court is glorious. Under the masks, it is horrible. It’s a trap: the truly competent maintain the rusting machinery of the Empire elsewhere. Those attracted to power vanish in the byzantine complexities of Court etiquette. (The universities teach courses in it, of dubious value.)

The barbarians are at the stargates. The imperial armies are funded by patrons, who have varying motivations. One donates to the Crown for the sponsorship of a Legion — it is not legal to have a private army. Good Legions will be picked up by other patrons if their patron falls, which reduces the ability of the patrons to control their sponsored troops. Some patrons seek status; some are altruists; some are fanatics. The campaign is the defense against the barbarians. Military SF, but not David Drake’s style. More Asimov, but lush.

• Posted by Bryant at 04:59 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

I’m running out of elliptical titles for posts about awards. Ah well.

Um, yeah, the Origins Awards. I didn’t game much this last year. That won’t stop me from commenting, though!

I see, among the Best RPG nominees: five licensed games. Well, four; I don’t think it counts as a license when the same person is writing both the original text (Artesia) and the RPG. Four out of the five use existing systems, with varying degrees of adaptation to the world.

No Dogs in the Vineyard.

There’s a lot of creativity in every RPG, licensed or not, original mechanics or not. I can’t believe that a bunch of licenses based on existing mechanics represents the most creative stuff the industry has to offer, though.

• Posted by Bryant at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

So, steampunk. It’s a loose, poorly fitting excuse for a genre. The Wikipedia entry reveals that pretty definitely. You got your computer parables, you got your obsession with steam, you got your fantasy tropes. You do not got decades of cheap adventure novels defining the genre. We make do with what we have, thusly.

Let us assume that the class warfare aspect of steampunk does not appeal to our prospective player as a primary focus of the campaign. I’m keeping the steam-powered automata-driven London, cause come on, how cool is that? The task at hand becomes finding a premise that makes good use of the setting. Doing Scotland Yard operatives is easy but then the setting is just background, rather than integral.

I have never been adverse to layering a touch of the horrific into my settings.

Let’s say that the gears of the difference engines, when layered as closely together as they must be in order to achieve the necessary efficiencies, attract visitors. Angelic and demonic alike? That’s sort of cool. Actually, that’s really cool, since nothing says angels are going to approve of the Queen.

I’m almost lifting from Dark Inheritance here, but it’s a cool setting. I can pull the Brotherhood of the Iron Rose, the Eight Heavenly Dragons, the International Geographic Society, and the Promethean Order wholesale, so I will. Drop the godgenes, drop the titans.

I believe that this consequence is not widely known. In fact, the Engines are only just now getting big enough. Characters should be people who have some sort of relation to the Engines — whether people who live nearby, mechanists, members of the House of Engineers? (Our third legislative body, occupying an uncomfortable slot between the House of Lords and the House of Commons.)

Huh. Sure. Angels/demons manifest as mechanicals, a la the Turk. But with … well, I’ll save that.

Doodle, doodle.

• Posted by Bryant at 05:55 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)