Promise to self: one non-war related post per day, minimum. I am not defined by my stance on this war. Atlas Games just released Ars Magica as a free PDF. Daring move, but it comes from one of the most savvy businessmen in the RPG business. I’m guessing it’ll work out pretty well and serve as a driver for sales of the supplements.
New week, new Game WISH (original). The question today: How do you prioritize gaming in your life to make sure it happens on an ongoing basis? Are there circumstances or scheduling issues that make it more or less likely for you to participate in a gaming session or a campaign? How do you work around these issues, or can you? I don’t really have that many commitments outside gaming — I tend to like to live a relatively unencumbered life. Even taking dating into account, I can swing a couple of biweekly games fairly easily. On the other hand, weekly games are a bit much of a commitment for me, which is the flip side of that attitude. ...
A generation ago, the City fell. The world fell. It is said that a great disaster marked the date, but that none knew of its significance until it was far too late. It is said that once, men did not believe in demons. If that is so, then disbelief was washed away by a torrent of winged creatures who eat memories and leave only shadows where men once walked. You are brookers, heirs to the tradition of your fathers, who fought the good fight on the Street of the Walls. You bargain with the merchants of the mainland, to ensure that every resident of the City can eat. You battle the demons that live in the tops of the fallen towers with sword and fire, because that is what your fathers did before they died, and you are better trained than your fathers. ...
What really amuses me about this review (warning: 100K GIF file) is how astoundingly accurate it is. I mean, yeah: In general, the concept and imagination involved is stunning. However, much more work, refinement, and especially regulation and simplification is necessary before the game is managable. The scope is just too grand, while the referee is expected to do too much in relation to the players. That’s the original three booklets in a nutshell.
I’m not in the habit of posting every little upcoming RPG release, but I gotta take note when Dan Brereton announces a Nocturnals supplement for Mutants & Masterminds. Brereton is a pretty decent writer and a great artist. His full color painted style is way outside the comic mainstream, but man is it lovely. Nocturnals is his horror comic — there’ve been a few minis and graphic novels over the years.
Gotta remember to do Game WISH (original) next week, if I have time, which I might not, since I’ll be at Dundracon and other West Coast points all weekend and my weeks are innnnnnnnsane!
After getting Sorcerer (which I will talk more about at some point) and reading Gibson’s new novel Pattern Recognition (ditto), I got all fired up to write up a little discussion of using the former to run a game set in the environment of the latter. Then Rob MacDougall beat me to it, so I just posted my thoughts in the thread he started. Man, I’m getting some good gaming out here.
Weird gaming idea of the day: You hand out character sheets that are folded up like origami, and instruct the players not to unfold them. They start out with the stats and skills and self-knowledge that are visible on the outside. At various points in play, you instruct them to make certain unfolds. New information is thus revealed, and put into play. If you wanted to randomize things a little, you could use a cootie catcher, but I’m not sure the associations are right. ...
I went on a mini RPG binge this weekend, and wound up with quite a bit of good stuff, but the gem of the lot was Charnel Gods (original), by Scott Knipe. It’s a PDF supplement for Sorcerer, and it’s so good it prompted me to buy that game, but it stands perfectly well on its own; at five bucks, there’s no excuse not to buy it if you’ve got any interest in — but I’m getting ahead of myself and reaching for the conclusion already. Tsk. ...
I was musing about pulp settings the other day. Off the top of my head: It’s the 1930s, and the Romany have taken to the skies. After the Hindenburg disaster, the public shied away from hydrogen dirigibles; but Paulo Pettersen, the sort of engineering genius who comes along once in a generation, believed he could make the vessels safe enough. What’s more, he convinced quite a few others of the same, and la! Before anyone realized it, the Romany flew, rising up above Europe in first a dozen and then a hundred great silvery balloons. ...