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Category: Gaming

Monday Mashup #42: Harry Potter

I’ve been meaning to do this mashup for while, and this is probably a good occasion. Let it roll: it’s Harry Potter time. Any book is fine, or all of them, or whatever suits — one of the elements of the series that I really like is the time progression, although I’m not confident that Rowling won’t screw it up, but do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the mashup law.

(Hm. I should use Al next Monday.)

WISH 98: Neophile

The antepentultimate WISH asks:

What are three games or settings that you’ve bought or seen recently (in stores or previews) that you’d really like to try? What interests you about them and why?

Nocturnals from Green Ronin; I like the unique genre niche carved out by the creepy heros, and the sourcebook gives me so many details to play with. Just — cool. Pacific Northwest-feeling monsterpunk.

Dogs in the Vineyard, because I dig the clerical harshness of it all. I’ve played a lot of clerics and I usually enjoy it even though I never do it by choice. Religion in gaming fascinates me.

Hm, and I kind of want to play something really heroic — doesn’t have to be superheroes, could be heroic fantasy or heroic transhuman or whatever. But there’s nothing out there that’s grabbing me. HeroQuest, but that’s not a new release. Charnel Gods (which Rob will be running soon), but that’s not a new release either. Big heroes. Larger than life heroes. Maybe Fireborn? FFG is doing such good setting work these days.

Oh, speaking of which, honorable mention to the Horizon series. Grimm and Spellslinger whet my appetite for gaming something fierce.

Monday Mashup #41: Hoosiers

In the spirit of Neel Krishnaswami’s recent post on sports games, today’s mashup is Hoosiers. It could be any sports movie, but I happen to like basketball a lot. I guess if you’re a football fan or something it’s OK to break away from the pack and do Any Given Sunday; the Mashup Ninjas will not pay you a visit. This once only.

Hoosiers is a nice simple story. Washed up coach comes to small town with a basketball team and teaches them how to win a championship. (Mostly discipline.) He alienates people with his fancy coaching ways but it turns out that in Indiana, winning is more important than anything else. He also finds love and redeems the town drunk.

Term of the art

My current favorite piece of gaming slang is “lasersharking.”

“Hey, you know, that game concept would be better if the sharks had lasers on their head.” Lasersharking. Leave the poor concept alone; not all concepts need lasers to reach their full potential.

Rifts is all lasersharking, all the way to the bottom turtle.

Elvis is everywhere

“Elvis’ entire career was a big mystical ritual, you know. He knew what he wanted to do all the way back in Memphis, and he put his whole life together so that he could pull it off. All those years, all those songs, all those different costumes — why, he was gathering up orgone energy decade after decade after decade. All flavors, too. Fat person orgone energy. Skinny pelvis orgone energy. Wartime orgone energy. All of it flowing into Elvis.

“Then he took that energy and used it to build an exact spiritual duplicate of Graceland in the afterlife. That’s why Graceland looks kind of funny in our world. You know, overdone and all that? It’s really meant to be viewed in the Great Beyond. When Elvis died SNAP his soul went straight to the place he’d been building all those years and he gave it the energy he’d been collecting and it became real.

“Now, this is what’s important. Graceland was designed to be a magnet for dead rock stars. Elvis didn’t cotton to the idea of rock stars getting caught in Hell just because they weren’t good enough for Heaven. You have to know that’s where most of them were bound, especially Elvis’ cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Elvis didn’t like to see anyone go to the bad place, let alone family, let alone fellow musicians. So he fixed that problem.

“Pretty quick all the souls of most of the rock ‘n’ rollers found their way to Afterlife Graceland. Jimmy, Janis, the Bopper, Buddy — all of them, or anyhow most of them. And whenever another rock star dies, there’s a little signpost on the way to Hell and Heaven which says ‘Hey, good buddy, come on over here and look what we got for you.’ Elvis put it up and most folks pay attention to it.”

“A couple of years after Elvis died, he led a raid on Heaven. Jimmy really wanted to jam with Bach, and that’s where Bach was, and Elvis thought Bach might want to come jam with Jimmy and the rest of the bunch. Long story short, it turned out Elvis was right and they got Bach out safe. Now there’s an angel on permanent duty at Graceland to make sure things don’t get out of hand. He’s not too fun to be around but we don’t mind him so much.

“But this is where it starts to get interesting. See, Elvis had one more thing in mind when he made this whole plan of his; there’s one more piece of the puzzle that needs to fit into place before Elvis feels complete. There’s one soul lost to Graceland and that soul is maybe the most important of all. There’s a man in Hell needs to get out as soon as he can, and Elvis intends to make that time come pretty damn quick.

“Tomorrow, Elvis is leading a raid on Hell to free the soul of Robert Johnson.”

PCs are the dead rock stars living in Graceland. Elvis taught everyone kung fu, so the system is Feng Shui. The rest is obvious.

GenCon Schedule

For the curious, my GenCon schedule follows.

Thursday

Iron Ref (Judge/Player), 2 PM — 8 PM

This is run by a couple I’ve sort of kind of known for a long time, and whom I had a great time gaming with last GenCon. The concept is also terribly cool. Quasi-fortunately, my other first choice for this slot filled up two hours after registration opened, so I didn’t have to make a choice.

Beneath the Astrolabe (Dread), 8 PM — midnight

I’ve always wanted to play Dread. Maybe I’ll get lucky and score a copy… OK, while looking up something else I just discovered that this is not the Dread that Rafael Chandler wrote. Well, crap. And I already bought the ticket. Well, it sounds kind of interesting anyhow.

Friday

Whirlpool of Blood (Shadowfist draft), noon — 4 PM

I am not ever going to be a top-notch Shadowfist player again. I’ve pretty much come to terms with this. I don’t play enough, I don’t obsess about it enough, and my play style is sufficiently different from the play style of the designers that I don’t get that many cards which support my play style. Mostly, though, I don’t play enough. So I’ll do one draft event and have fun, but I won’t do the World Championship this time.

Fireborn: Become the Dragon, 4 PM — 8 PM

The setting sounds kind of cool but I really want to find out what the system is like.

Saturday

The Frogs of War (Adventure!), noon — 4 PM

Heard good things about this GM from friends of mine, plus it’s Adventure! so how could I miss it? I got the last ticket for this. Phew.

Real Men Wear Tights (Four Colors Al Fresco), 4 PM — 8 PM

I am very intrigued by superheroes in a historic setting. The system is also pretty fascinating — it’s different, and I’m a neophile.

Sunday

Dragon Bone (Everway), noon — 4 PM

Another GM recommended to me by friends. The same friends, come to think of it.

I also failed to sign up for a Black Company preview. I’m going to try and get into it anyway. I really want to see what Green Ronin does with Black Company.

WISH 93: Incoming!

I can answer these in any order I want! And I want to do WISH 93 right now.

Does joining a game with a lot of background thrill or intimidate you? What do you do to try to learn the background, or to compensate for not having it? If you GM, how do you help newcomers to a background-heavy game? What has worked for you as a player/GM, and what hasn’t?

I kind of like it as an opportunity to play supporting character. I always feel a bit of pressure, when starting a new game, to help establish group dynamics and character. As a newbie to a big game, I can play a supporting role and feel satisfied — I can be there to support someone else’s characterization happily. That’s a lot of fun for me.

It’s also convenient as a method of getting real newbie characterization. The other PCs know things which mine do not, which means I can play wide-eyed or naive effectively. “Look, there can’t possibly be UFOs.” That sort of thing. It’s a dynamic that’s hard to get in a new campaign because everyone’s on equal ground.

I guess in general I’m saying that it’s fun to leverage unequal OOC ground to provide good unequal ground roleplaying in character.