Hey Man, well this is Babylon

This weekend is Dragoncon, which I am sadly not attending for financial reasons. I asked Greg to print out a few copies of the Quad RPG and give them out on the game floor at the convention. He and his girl took it a step further, and totally awesome-ified them.

Here’s one of the special collector’s editions of the Quad RPG:

I love you Greg.

I just now posted the two-page PDF of the Quad “Quick and Dirty” RPG on the Quad Page. It’s designed as a game you can print on the front and back of a sheet of paper, fold into your wallet, and play just about anywhere and at any time. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Back around the turn of the century I lived as a renter at the Psi Upsilon fraternity house on Georgia Tech campus. They had weekly house meetings, and a common feature of each of these meetings was a little round-robin venture they called “Bitches and Roses,” wherein each attendee got a moment to say something they were happy about and something they were upset about, be it relevant to their life or whatever. Each person would give a “bitch” which would be something like “studying for the goddamn finals sucks!” and then follow it with a “rose” such as “i wuvvs my hot nerd girlfriend!”

I’m going to continue that tradition here, and hopefully keep doing it every Monday. Additionally, I’m adding “Hopes” to the list, to catalog the things I’ve got in the works, or the desires I’ve hopefully got coming to me just around the corner. So without further ado, I’ll kick this off.

Bitches

• My roommate heinously sprained her ankle and had to go to the emergency room Friday night, right before our much-anticipated night of zombie-murdering. She’s in a lot of pain, and it makes me sad.

Roses

• Thankfully, she wasn’t too incapacitated that we weren’t able to pick up our plans Sunday. We finished Resident Evil (Gamecube Remake) yesterday as Jill, and it felt good. Sure, we used a walkthrough, but that’s only because we’re on something of a tight schedule. We need to be able to finish the series in completion before the new one rolls out next year, and we’re both quite aware that the October releases of Fallout 3 and Deadspace will heavily impact our playing of the other titles in the franchise. Go Team Hotness!
• A second one! Saturday we had a fucking fantastic six-player game of Twilight Imperium (3rd Edition). That’s the most epic game I’ve been in yet, and I’ll be uploading pictures soon. Special kudos to Sam, who despite never having played before kept tied with the highest score right to the end.

Hopes

• I want a weekly game again. I’m really inspired for a street-level Unknown Armies game focusing on members of a small zine (maybe grass-roots, maybe political, maybe even poetic). The game would take place, as they say, “20 Minutes into the Future” and be very inspired by Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Strange Days, Max Headroom, and Dark Angel. Of course, I have to find players first, so likely this concept will change drastically once I get them. But regardless, I really want to run a street-level UA campaign with some element of journalism uniting the people.

Thanks to Travis Brown, Cannibal Contagion now has discussion forums over on the GoPlay! PDX website. Drop on in if you have questions or ideas!

Finally, all the updates are live. There’s quite a few, which is why this has taken so long to get out:

• Added option rule in the Gear section for “inventory slot” mechanics, allowing a simulation of the Survival-Horror game inventory management.
• The “Threat Pool” and NPC sections of the GM side of the book have been almost entirely re-written, and completely reorganized. NPCs are now purchased with fewer Threat Pool tokens, and enter the game with frequently-higher Threat scores. They’re supposed to be dangerous, and now they are.
• Expanded section on game themes, and how to effectively incorporate them.
• More info in both the Player Tips and CiC Tips sections.
• A bit more detail in the introductory scenario. Still working on that one.
• A large handful of errata updates, typo fixes, and corrections to outdated information.
• Added spacers for several future additions, such as Index, character sheets, and a few planned art pieces.
• A few more sections of example text have been added.
• Added advice for using player-framed scenes.

The updated rules and sheets can be found here, as usual. Next on the immediate design list is to create some additional helper cards, to assist with management of the optional limited inventory system.

In Cannibal Contagion, the CiC uses the Threat Pool to create NPCs, directly purchasing their Threat scores with points from the pool. As it currently stands, the mechanics for creating NPCs and generating Threat are.. well… a tad sloppy.

Today I had a new idea that I’m considering using instead. This would make the Threat Pool system a lot more modular, less haphazard, and give the CiC a lot more control over the NPCs and Dangers without overburdening him with oodles of tokens. Here’s the idea:

The CiC would use tokens from the Threat Pool to purchase an NPC, with the token cost being based upon the NPC’s Role. Fodder NPCs would cost 1 token, Hindrances 2, Minions 4, Big Bads 6, and Bigger-Badder-Big-Bads 10. Once brought into the game, the CiC then draws cards to determine their actual Threat scores. If you’re using the little NPC cards, it’s really easy to then just set the drawn cards beside or underneath the associated NPC card for quick reference in play. For Fodder, draw two and keep the lowest. For Hindrances, draw 1. For Minions, draw 2 and keep the highest, for Big Bads draw three and add together the highest two, and for BBBBs draw four and add together the highest three.

In this system, the actual composition of the NPC is still irrelevant: a Threat 5 Hindrance could just as easily be a group of five zombies as it could be one really tough zombie.

Threat Pool could still also be used as Awesome tokens as per normal rules. The amount of Threat pool available would decrease significantly, though. I’m thinking, at the beginning of each scene the CiC gains 1 for each scene that has passed and one for each player at the table.

Whaddaya think?

Last night I played 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons with some folks here in town, getting my very first actual play experience with the new system from Wizards of the Coast. All the guys were spot-on fellas, and I had a lot of fun. Yes, I do look forward to playing again, too. Can ya believe it? Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on 4th Edition so far, and some of my mixed reactions to the game. Yes, there is a good bit of griping ahead, but like I said, I do hope to find out more as the system unfolds. Read more

There will most likely be a new update to the Cannibal Contagion playtest rules in the next day or so. I’ve been adding spacers for art, ads, character profiles, and an index. Additionally, I’m working on a somewhat thick section on evoking game themes, such as survival, macabre humor, and paranoia, among others. I’ve also added a few additional rules and clarifications, including a section on mechanical limitations on a character’s Gear (thank you, Resident Evil!).

As usual, when the update is ready, look for it on this blog.

- NPC

I’m currently gathering requests for back-of-the-book ads for the Cannibal Contagion book. The final print format will be 5.5 x 8.5, and I’m looking at filling four pages with ads for other gaming things. Maybe two pages of full-page ads, and then two pages with two half-page ads each.

Advertising will likely just be free. Lemme know if you have a good gaming-related product or something to advertise, and we’ll talk! Products should of course be things available at or after the intended December 2008 publication date.

Update: One page filled already by Orcusville! Three left.

- NPC

On Sunday, I watched the HD version of the new Watchmen trailer eleven times. I’ve watched it many more since then. I want this movie very badly. I just this weekend finished reading the complete series for the first time, and I’m really amazed by it. I doubt anything I could say about it hasn’t already been said, so in short, I’ll just say that it was Amazing.

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