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Category: Gaming

Library time

The reading list for “Whitey’s Boyos” looks something like this:

  • Black Mass: the canonical book about Whitey Bulger and John Connolly. This is where you get the basic history.
  • Boyos: a gritty novel by an ex-Southie gangster. Not brilliant but pretty propulsive, and for obvious reasons the author has a good feel for the Southie underworld.
  • Street Soldier: in a similar vein to Boyos, but non-fiction. Not as well-written and some have questioned its veracity, but I enjoyed it.
  • All Souls: the best of the non-fiction, in my eyes. It doesn’t directly focus on Whitey, but it’s got great detail about growing up in Southie and it’s very well-written. Read this one for balance: it’s the price paid by Southie residents for the kind of things you read about in Street Soldier.
  • The Kenzie/Gennaro series: an absolutely searing Boston-based mystery series. Dennis Lehane knows the dirty streets of Dorchester, and he writes the grime as well as anyone. If I can get half the feel of these novels into the game, I’ll be happy. (See also his Mystic River, which is not a Kenzie/Gennaro book but which shares their characteristics.)

Tell me these things

The character questionnaire for “Whitey’s Boyos” (name still tentative, suggestions welcome) follows. The context: Whitey’s squad of demon-killing hard-nosed bruisers has around for nine months or so now. A couple of the original members have died; there have been a couple of new recruits. The player characters are the entire squad. They are not expected to have jobs outside the life — Whitey pays a generous stipend to people willing to risk their lives fighting demons.

Some of the questions can’t be answered until all the characters are in, and since the final roster hasn’t been finalized, that’s obviously a little ways away. This is mostly so I get it written down and have time to chew on it.

The questionnaire is written in the masculine gender. This doesn’t mean that female characters are impossible, but after deliberation, I think the gender choices in the language reinforce the fact that female characters would exist within a sexist environment.

1. Who does your character hate? Who screwed him over? Who would he hurt, given a chance?
2. Which family member is your character closest to? (Yes, your character has a living family member.) What’s the relationship like?
3. Which member of the squad saved your life? Which squad member’s life did you save? How’d it happen? Can’t be the same person.
4. Where does your character hang out? Where does he feel safe? Where does he go to relax?
5. What’s your character’s favorite movie? Favorite album?
6. Does your character go to Mass? If not, any other regular religious activity? If not, why?
7. What would your character’s perfect evening be like?
8. Who is your character dating and/or sleeping with?
9. What would your character do with a million dollars? How about a hundred thousand?
10. What’s the worst disappointment of your character’s life? What’s his greatest achievement, from his point of view?

Lunchtime Poll #7

Li asks, “I’ve often said that one of the best science-fiction authors whose work you probably aren’t reading is Connie Willis. Along the same lines, what’s the best game that I’m probably not playing?”

Well, I am reading Connie Willis, but I would recommend Primetime Adventures. It isn’t necessarily an easy game to figure out, but the screen presence and fan mail systems at the very least illuminate often under-considered aspects of roleplaying and at the best they produce some really fun play.

"Orcs"

[Ed: still with apologies to Television Without Pity. And to anyone who’s confused by this, actually…]

This week on Dungeon Majesty: Oliver suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous childhood, Cassie and Millie get hit on by a swim team, Alvin gets a job, Andrew uncovers secrets, and Ferdinand is mostly away this episode. We’re grumpy about that last.

"Owlbear"

[Ed: with apologies to Television Without Pity.]

Will Maggie Gyllenhaal free herself from an over-protective mother? Will Philip Seymour Hoffman overcome a slight case of being Philip Seymour Hoffman? Will Owen Wilson ever stop being cute, and/or find a distributor for his documentary? Will William H. Macy discover yet another way to lose an election? And most important, will your humble recapper be able to remain coherent despite continuous references to that geeky game she always ignored in high school? We won’t find out this week, except maybe for that last one, but at least the wheels will be in motion.

Parlous desires

Green Ronin’s new Black Company worldbook makes me want to run a five session game during which the PCs lose. Gritty fantasy, city under siege, that sort of thing. What can you do before you die?

Five redux

In a futile effort to save Chris, show off for Brant, and feed my own ego:

Texcatlipoca Has Come From The North: a companion game to Huey Long’s Men of Action, set in AD 1000 or so in the Yucatan. Brave Byzantine warriors and their Viking allies battle the hordes of the god-king Quetzalcoatl. It uses D20 psionics rules, either Mindshadows or the WotC offering, depending on which is better. No magic. Plenty of Cathars.

The Seven Familes: there are seven great familes in the shadows of the world, struggling for dominance. Mystic flavor — perhaps stealing a little from GURPS Cabal. Ritual actions have subtle effects, so that getting married at the proper time with the proper flowers could provide luck for the family in certain endeavors for the next year, but there are no fireballs. One could think of this as roleplaying humans in the world of Nobilis, if one liked. Maybe use the Window system.

St. Cuthbert’s Men of Action: full-blown pulp adventure in a fantasy world. Despite the title, I wouldn’t actually want to use D&D. I don’t have a preferred pulp system yet… but I digress. The setting is Victorian in the cities and pulp as heck out in the jungles. Think Tarzan here. Humans and dwarves and elves are picking themselves back up again after a lengthy Dark Age; researchers are rediscovering old principles of magic, and the remnants of the First Age lie in the center of the forgotten cities, where mystical defense grids still wait for intruders. Good fun. At least one NPC named Hector.

The Legion: Trinity imagined as space opera. Described in detail here. Takes place in the Aeon Universe, but tilted somewhat to get the classic Jack Williamson space opera feel — not as grandiose as E. E. Smith’s books, but very steel-jawed. This is almost heresy, but since Trinity D20 makes it more attractive to play non-psions, I might use that over the original.

Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki: There is no magic in the world because the dolphins took it all to fight the good fight against the horrendous Cthulhoid creatures that live beneath the sea. As countless Call of Cthulhu scenarios prove, humans cannot be trusted with esoterica. There are two components to this game. In one, a small cadre of trusted human librarians retrieves copies of the Necronomicon and other such tomes from surface libraries. In the other, elite dolphin magickal squads combat Rl’yeh’s minons and the Mi-Go (who have long since eradicated and/or enslaved the native denizens of the Hollow Earth). The players take on one PC on each side of the water. Uses Call of Cthulhu mechanics.

Five-pak

Yeah, every now and then we like to dump out campaign ideas we won’t run.

1. Aztlan Chrome — near-future cyberpunk set in the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez metroplex. Assume a de facto independent state in that region, extending all the way to San Diego/Tijuana, with very little federal control on the part of either Mexico or the United States. The tech is sufficient for wired reflexes; i.e., money can provide you with a definite advantage in a fight (which is really the core ethos of cyberpunk gaming, right?). The Ciudad Juarez serial killer is on my mind as I think about this setting. So is the five solid hours of Los Lobos I listened to last night. So is The Shield, but I’m not sure if that’s for antagonists or protagonists. Could be either, really.

2. Bathsheba Smiles — an A/State game that kicks off with the death of a Nakamura-Yebisu noblewoman. Her will has an immediate and world-shaking effect on the lives of four people living in Mire End, one of the worst slums in the City. A/State is one of those keen grim Scottish SF horror games; everyone lives in one big City which is drenched in politics and bitterness and mystery and run-down Dickensian slums. The macrocorporates have nanotech, but you have maybe some fried dog for dinner if you’re lucky. Think China Mieville’s New Crobuzon, but no magic and more technology.

3. Big Fangs, Skinny Ties — this was a mashup I did some time ago. Still one of my favorites. It’s a fairly standard Sabbat Vampire game centering around a Sabbat pack that’s basically the Banzai Irregulars with fangs. I’d play up the whole “Sabbat save the world from Antedeluvians” aspect of the Sabbat, since it’s my favorite aspect of the sect. Remember: the Sabbat are completely and utterly good guys, once you accept the concept that humans are cattle.

4. Rats in the CellarAngel meets Whitey Bulger. You know this one. The big problem I have here is that everyone who’s expressed interest doesn’t want to play a hard-nosed Irish guy from Southie. One or two outsiders is OK but it loses the feel if it’s all errant Harvard professors and the like. Since I’ll never get around to running it, that’s probably OK. Under the Eaves is the sister game to this. I can never decide if it’s lighter or darker.

5. Squared Circle — the indie wrestling federation Unknown Armies game that I’ve wanted to run forever. Indie wrestling is a perfect environment for quite a few UA character types; wrestlers cut themselves all the time and they take stupid risks and it ought to be obvious how great the ring is for many Avatars. The ring itself has been soaking up magickal energy all this time until it’s a super-potent artifact. The owner of the fed is one of the last Cryptomancers, because what’s pro wrestling but an extended lie? To get into the mindset for this, remember that a wrestling federation is pretty much just an old-time touring carnival and watch that HBO series again. Yeah, like that.

Three axis

Note to self: the Miike RPG has six stats, arranged in three pairs. Love/Obsession, Violence/Brutality, and Sex/Possession. I suspect that when I write the game and stick it behind a content warning, that last pair will become something more explicit and raw; “Possession” is a muted form of what I have in mind. I think the rating in each pair remains constant — so you could have 3 dots in Love/Obsession. The question is how you manifest it.

I have this unformed mechanic in which character creation involves each player telling stories about their character until someone says “OK, that squicks me.”

I am not sure that I would actually want to play this game, but I kind of want to write it.