Gaming

It’s Chris’s fault, really. After a pulse-pounding conclusion to his Morrisonian supers campaign, I have a yen to run Champions. Maybe it’ll pass. I’m probably safe, since I don’t think anyone in my current gaming group is a Hero fan. (“The chargen! It burns my eyes!”) (The UNTIL Superpowers Database makes it easy! Really!) Champions Universe? Maybe. Millenium City is a nice piece of work, and there’s a ton of background available. Or I could do my own universe and just reuse all the interesting super writeups from the CU; with novice Hero players, it wouldn’t matter. ...

Phil Brucato turned up at Gen Con this year with a game called Deleria (original), which was pretty clearly his vision of what Changeling should have been. And I’m a mark for shiny things, so you can tell where this is going. I pre-ordered. The book came in the other day. It’s a big hardcover with really shoddy binding. The inside is glossy and full cover and more or less a design mishmash that actually works fairly well. It’s got a hodge-podge feel to it that makes sense given the subject matter, and the art (lots of Photoshop manipulations) is OK. ...

How to send literally dozens of fans into a tizzy in one easy step: “Sword & Sorcery Studios Announces d20 Versions of Adventure!, Aberrant and Trinity.” (original) I think D20 will probably work out just fine — it certainly isn’t any more of a handicap than the Storyteller system. I think Aberrant will have trouble getting past Mutants and Masterminds, but that’s White Wolf’s problem to worry about. It’ll be good to see Trinity back in print. ...

Arref (original) and Ginger (original) are talking about “sticky PCs” today — characters who really touch and affect other PCs by their very nature. It’s an excellent concept, and one I’ve used without having a good name for it for a while. In gaming, the easiest way for a PC to get screen time is to draw out the other PCs. “Tell me your story — it sounds interesting.” The key is to enable screen time for other people, and get your screen time from the reflection, rather than trying to draw others into your story. Popular characters are those who facilitate someone else’s roleplay. The dynamic is most visible in large-cast games, like LARPs and MUDs, but I think it applies even in smaller face to face groups.

This is one of those bits where I’m using Popone as a scratchpad. Be warned. Brant kicked off his Paridon game the other night with character creation. Since I don’t know what’s good for me, I went for one of those PCs who can be a terrible idea in the wrong hands. Hopefully mine aren’t. Amelia “Andy” Wellstone is an orphan, who grew up with her twin brother Alistair. Her private belief, which is undoubtedly false, is that their mother was an unwed noblewoman who was afraid to claim them as her own. She is bitter about this; almost as bitter as she is about Alistair’s death at the hands of Isle Bassington — the half-elven ruler of the Paridonesian underworld. She has dark hair and dark eyes, and a sarcastic mouth. She is 5’8”. She is nineteen years old. She spends most of her time in drag, passing as a male both in underworld circles (which she is infiltrating, with the intent of exacting revenge on Bassington) and in noble circles (which she is robbing blind, choosing her targets at the parties she brazenly crashes). Think Raffles crossed with the popular myth of the Chevalier d’Eon crossed with La Maupin. Stats follow.

(Boston, MA) August 28th, 2003 — Innocence Games announced today that it has acquired the license to publish tabletop roleplaying games based on the classic pulp works of William S. Burroughs. The license encompasses both the Warlord of Mars series and the popular Naked Jungle series, starring Tarzan. Innocence Games will release their first Burroughs game in Q4 2004: Tarzan, Lord of the Interzone, based on the first of the Naked Jungle books. Later supplements will incorporate Burroughs’ complex Mars mythology into the world of the Interzone and its street-raised King. ...

Perhaps reaching new depths of geekiness here, but I added a relationship mapping feature (original) to my local gaming Wiki. It shows how nodes link to one another; here’s Reese Beulay (original) as a collection of boxes and lines. This is actually pretty useful for visualizing how characters relate to one another. I’m going to play around with using it to do relationship maps for new campaigns, too. There’s probably some clever way to use this to visualize blog connections, but I’m not sure that it wouldn’t just degrade into a black hole. Maybe I’ll play with it sometime.

Absolutely awesome campaign concept, plus a bonus first session writeup. Man, I am beginning to yearn for some good pulp. Here’s the most brilliant gem out of all the brilliant gems: The characters were all previous associates who had been in Paris just before the bombs were dropped. They don’t talk about what happened there, but as a result of it they all swore an oath — an oath which takes preference over loyalties, family and faith. Each of them can call on the others to help them with any situation once and once only. For the first time, one of them has invoked the oath. ...

I’m still braindead, despite any appearances to the contrary, but Jonathan Walton writes a mean campaign prospectus (original). I am not sure I’d want to play in it, but the prospectus makes me want to want to play in it, if you see what I mean. Also, it has the best tag line ever, which I won’t ruin for you. Read to the bottom.

Since my Typepad beta account will vanish sooner or later, I moved my Gen Con photos to a local gallery. If you saw them then, you’ve seen them now — nothing new there.