Category: Gaming

There’s a backstory, but it’s too late in the evening for me to write it up. This is for Jeff.

The Men of Action game, invented by Rob MacDougall:

Pick a historical figure; let’s say Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman’s Men of Action! Describe the ensuing campaign.

Go.

I’m not posting this scenario because I intend to run it. I’m posting it because I like to think. Truth? I’m better at coming up with concepts than running them anyhow. This one’s a freebie; steal as you like.

It’s 1972. World of Darkness. Miami. Cuba smells like revolution and the Democratic National Convention smells like a boxing ring. McGovern has a legion of young, angry, active delegates behind him. They’d rather fight than think. Humphrey has the Machine, a political creature made of motor oil and money. To the Machine, the present moment is the last hope of traditional politics.

Everyone’s wrong; it’s always the largest hurricane in the world when you’re inside the eye of the storm.

You were turned into a vampire not more than a couple of months ago by a couple of guys pretending to be union organizers. You are weapons. You may, perhaps, be deluding yourself about this — but you are weapons: you were created in order to serve a need. Your master wants Humphrey to win. McGovern has the distinct edge.

It’s the second night of the convention, and Gary Hart — McGovern’s campaign manager — is executing brilliant procedural moves to get the right delegates seated; his floor organization is building strength. He needs to — not die, but vanish for a couple of days. He could be found in a drunken haze after the convention. That would suit; that would build the image of the McGovern campaign as a group of men unable to handle the demands of politics.

It’s the second night of the convention, and there are vampires on the floor. It is unlikely that you are alone; it is more than likely that you will meet those of your kind who wish to protect McGovern and Hart. Then again, as a vampire, alone is the default state of affairs.

For the easily amused: Huey Long’s Men of Action.

I just wrote up a little fictional piece, but it sucked and while I know what I need to write, I don’t currently have the brainpower to write it. So here’s the straight dope.

Jerry Russell is a right-wing talk radio host at KTLK, in LA. He has a medium-sized and devoted following; he pushes the talking points of his ideological friends and runs down the opposition like any good talk show host on any side of the political spectrum. He rules the airwaves from midnight to 4 AM, and has always been a little nervous about trying to go daytime. In fact, he’s turned down opportunities more than once because he’s afraid he couldn’t compete with the big boys.

He is not a Michael Savage or an Ann Coulter. He has a bit of Art Bell in him, ranting about conspiracies from time to time. He does not tell people that the moon landing was a hoax, however.

A year ago, Jerry Russell and his entire production crew at KTLK were killed and turned into vampires by a small coterie with a yen for irony. He doesn’t know anything else but broadcasting, so — he’s still broadcasting. He has the station manager under his Discipline-enhanced thumb, and he has sleeping quarters for him and his crew in the station. Just as he was worried about venturing into the rough world of daytime talk, so he worries about going out into the night and meeting other vampires. Besides, he has to keep to his schedule.

I’m not entirely sure where the premise goes, but that’s the setup.

A number of GenCon pictures, at varying levels of amusement value, can be found here.

If and when I run that 70s Boston Angel game, the WhedonWiki is gonna be a useful resource. Kind of a pity they don’t let anyone edit, but I can understand why — the spammers are getting aggressive about using wikis to improve their Googlerank. If I were doing spam fighting at Google, I’d be seriously considering removing wikis from the pagerank equation.

(Bill, I still need a name for that wiki. Give me one and I’ll set it up.)

I think I need an artist to do a cover (b&w) destined for a 6” x 9” book, plus three or four half-page interior illos, also b&w. The subject matter is, unsurprisingly, superheroes. I’m not too picky about the era, although I’d want heroes rather than anti-heroes. I can’t pay real artist rates; I’m thinking more towards the low end of RPG artist rates — $125 for the cover, $25 for each interior art piece. I may be slightly off on those prices. I just want publication rights; I don’t want to own the piece.

I figure I’ll start poking around on the Forge and maybe on Elfwood soon, but I figured I’d put out the call here first.

I just completed my 24 Hour RPG. Phew. Started: 1 PM, 7/24/04; finished: 1 PM, 7/25/04.

Above The Earth is a superhero game designed around resource management mechanics. It’s flexible enough to handle street-level superheroes and cosmic powers, all in the same fight. “You have a hundred six sided dice; when you run out, you run out.”

I started this one with the example of play, which made writing the rest of the game almost painless. I wish I’d had another hour to review it and in particular double-check the math in the example of play; I looked at it a few times but I’m convinced I missed something. C’est la vie.

I also forgot to add the section on using HeroClix figures and maps, which was intended for people who really like tactical maps. I wanted to point out that rules-light systems could still support that kind of thing. Perhaps there’ll be a Extended Remix Edition at some point.

If there is, I will definitely have better art and formatting. I really wanted to make it easy to print this out and fold it into a booklet, which meant 5×8 pages printed two-up, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the PDF right using just Microsoft Word, so I punted to a columnar layout. Which works, but I couldn’t do page numbers properly, which is why there aren’t any of those.

Not that a twenty-four page book needs those, but still… hey! I hit 24 (small) pages exactly. Keen. The final word count is 6,300 words.

I also wanted art. I spent an hour looking for public domain superhero art on the Web. No luck. So the look is pretty boring. But functional.

I didn’t lose any sleep writing this; in fact, I even took time out to go see The Bourne Supremacy which actually revitalized my energies nicely. And I thought about the game design during the previews, so it wasn’t totally lost time.

As a whole, I’m pretty happy with the project and the result.