Another mashup from Kirt "Loki" Dankmyer today: “Hotel California”, by the Eagles. Read the lyrics, remember the times when they seemed like the deepest thing in the world, and… mash!
Category: Memes
I promised the Lensman series, and thus the Lensman series will be mashed. Onwards, stalwart companions!
If you haven’t read the Lensman books, you should. They are a fundamental part of science fiction history; get past the sexism and you’ll find a surprisingly liberal — even radical — set of ideals. Particularly in Children of the Lens. You’ll also find big explosions, and everyone likes big explosions.
Wish #87 asks:
What are three or more web sites you’ve used recently as a player or GM? Why do you use them? What do you get from them?
20’ by 20’ Room, of course!
But also:
- ThePulp.Net, which is the best source for pulp info, plus links to lots of free pulp ebooks.
- The FAS IRP, which is the Federation of American Scientists’ Intelligence Resource Program. Essential for modern-day espionage/technothriller games. And for Feng Shui.
- Incunabula, hub site for the Ong’s Hat mythos, which I sprung on my superhero players recently.
Other tricks… if you search Google Images for “party pictures,” you’ll get a lot of candid shots. Great for pictures of NPCs who aren’t supposed to look like movie stars.
Oh, yeah, speaking of photographs: the Library of Congress put its Prints and Photographs Catalog online. For Boston-specific photos, I use this site. Yale’s Beinecke Library also has a very nice digital collection.
I thought I’d done this one before, but careful examination reveals that I have not. Thus, this Monday we’ll pay homage to the Oscars. Glitter, awards selected by popular vote, all eyes on the gowns — that sort of thing.
(Lensmen next week. Promise.)
Since I’m hopelessly behind, I’m going to combine WISH 86:
What can the GM or other players do to help “midwife” the character creation process?
And WISH 85:
What inspires you to create characters? Do you have partially-developed characters in mind for use when you get into a new campaign? Do you shop characters around, or do you come up with new characters when you get into a campaign? Why? If you GM, are you bothered by receiving a solicitation for a “generic” character, or does it enthuse you to get a solid proposal even if it’s not closely tailored to your game?
And just ramble a lot.
I tend to go in cycles for my characters. I did a couple of travel-oriented characters in Reese and Cian, which I think is finished; I have a cycle of flippant competent noble Guy Gavriel Kay-esque characters which may or may not be complete. Probably not, since I think Mr. Wellstone was drawn from that model. Geoff Heortson is a recycled version of the character I came up with for the Arcana Unearthed game. And so on.
Sometimes I come up with completely new ideas, though. The PC I have in mind for the wuxia Charnel Gods game doesn’t match anything I’ve done recently. He may be the start of a new cycle, but I don’t think so — he’s too much a product of the background for the game. Stick was unique too, although he was generated for another abortive campaign a long time ago. But I won’t likely play him again.
So yeah, it really just depends. I do what catches my interest.
I tend to try and figure out where my character will find spotlight time. Competence is not necessary; hooks are. I always throw in hooks if I can. It’s OK if the GM doesn’t abuse them — if nothing else they’re a signal that I don’t mind hooks, after all.
As a GM, I could care less if someone recycles a character. I prefer to fit my world around the characters. This is my own personal style, of course; I don’t mind making a character closely tailored to someone else’s campaign. But if someone hands me a character that’s not tailored for my world, I see that as an indication of what the player wants out of the campaign, and I like trying to provide whatever’s wanted.
One player in my DoSS campaign was leery of writing up his PC’s Disadvantages, on the grounds that it would force me to put those elements into my plots. No! That’s the whole point of Disadvantages as far as I’m concerned: telling the GM what kinds of elements you want to see. But that’s me.
This is a hint as to what I think a GM (or other players) can do to midwife character creation. It’s a matter of listening to the quirks that a player puts into the characters, and building upon them. Kill Puppies For Satan has some very good material on this: during character creation, the GM goes around the room and says, to each player in turn, “OK, how do you know so-and-so?” So-and-so being the previous player’s PC, if I recall correctly. I think that’s great advice, and I think it could be adapted and made deeper. Perhaps having the players fill out a PC relationship map, in the strict Edwards style — only relatives and lovers get connections?
One tough cop. One tough killer. Ten thousand mashups.
Gotta be one of the best action movies of all time. Tequila is the cop who accidentally killed an undercover cop and is wracked with guilt. Tony is another undercover cop who is torn between honor and duty. They team up to take down a gunrunner. Action sequences of rare and surpassing excitement, many of them set in a hospital, ensue.
Before I get into my concoction, a free offer (sounds better than a request): if you have subjects you’d like to see mashed up, by all means email me or post ‘em here. My choices are always shaped by my preferences and prejudices, which hardly seems fair. Confound and delight me.
Today, being a holiday, did not feel much like a Monday. Ooops.
Anyhow, I’m going to steal a mashup from Jere today. He says he’s seen a lot of campaigns that draw from T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land." I’ve never been lucky enough for that, although I did once play a paladin who drew religious inspiration from an old battered copy of Selected Poems. (Eric Hargan’s Catholicworld campaign. Eric is now writing policy studies for the Federalist Society, among other lawyerly pursuits.)
But I risk digressing into the treacherous political waters so evident in my previous post. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not yet April; it is not yet the cruellest month. Still, we may still breed lilacs before their time is come.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes:
What five games would you love to run/play if you had a willing group and a weekly time slot?
I’m going to leave out games I’m in or running now, of course (yay, Champions and Buffy), and also games I expect to be able to play in soon — I’m looking at you, Star Wars and Charnel Gods and espionage game! You can also assume that I wish I could go back and play in Carl’s games again. Those disposed of:
- Over the Edge, preferably with the dark edgy gritty aspects in full swing.
- Vampire, and stop laughing. I haven’t played enough of this to be burned out on it. I’m thinking straight up Vampire Revised here, without all the various escalation bits. Or maybe the new version, if it resonates with me.
- Dark Inheritance, which I will never ever get to play, but a guy can dream. I find the D20 Modern system to be fairly elegant and I really like the Dark Inheritance mythos. Also, it’s the best example of modular setting design ever.
- The Dying Earth, so that I might properly indulge my inner Oscar Wilde.
- Trinity, the best SF game ever, not that I’m biased or anything. Yeah, I know the political history is a bit wonky but you can fix most of that if you aren’t hampered by the need to shoehorn Aberrant in there.
Nobilis is a very strong runner-up.
Since Godzilla (Quicktime trailer) is being re-released in the United States in the original version, I figure it’s a good time to mashup that very movie. The scoop on all things Godzilla is long and intricate; feel free to draw from any element of the mythos.
This week’s Game WISH asks:
What are your characters’ mottoes, in ten words or less? Quotes and formal mottoes encouraged.
That’s fun! In no particular order:
Paul/Emoticon: For God, France, and humanity.
Reese: It’s all about the roads.
Mr. Wellstone: Fame follows fashion.
Cian: One must always journey to find wisdom.
Stick: Break dimensions, go to jail.
Clarice: Hail Britannia!
Constantine: Friends and family; blood and bone.
Jayson: Fortune follows.
(That last is a bit of a cheat, being my own family motto. But I like it.)