So far, my quest has been well-fought but hard-won. I’ve lost a few circumstantial allies on occasion, including a poor scavenger who got caught in the crossfire when those no-good Talon Merc goons jumped me, but thankfully, word is getting out: Shrike’s gunning for the bad guys, and the bad guys be scared. Just last night I donned my favorite leather jacket², pumped myself up on Buffout and MedX, and took out an entire clutch of nasty Raiders using only a Louisville Slugger I had affectionately named Pablo. I barely had time to catch my breath as I led my assault, needing to take them out with as much celerity as possible so as to maximize the effectiveness of my chemically-skyrocketed battle prowess. I charged through their compound – one insultingly forged out of the ruins of an old elementary school – and wiped their filthy souls from the planet with minimal injury. Then I slept off my wounds in their own beds, dragged their bodies into a central heap, peed on their dead leader’s corpse, and set them all ablaze with their own flamethrower before leaving the next morning.

I fucking hate Raiders.

What’s next for Shrike? Word is there’s some “family” of villains terrorizing the poor nearby settlement of Arefu. An easy-on-the-eyes dame named Lucy ain’t seen or heard from her folks up there in quite some time. As the new sheriff of these parts, I reckon it’s ’bout time I let these cheeky bastards know who’s now in charge ’round here. Time to go give this family a taste of the Baseball Bat o’ Justice. Pablo’s a close talker, a real social type.

This past Monday night saw another session of my weekly Savage Worlds game. I’ve become a bit slack with this game, owing in no small part to the increasing difficulty of me running games on Monday nights. This campaign’s days are acknowledgedly numbered, but thankfully this most recent session really got my blood pumping again. I eagerly await the ending few sessions of the series, in part because gaming on Mondays is takings its toll on me, but mostly because I really want to know what happens next. The beauty of running this game largely from the seat of my pants is that when it gets me, it really gets me, and I’m as eager to know the future as the players are. I’ll wait a few more sessions before I post things in detail, though.

I’ll end this post with a little idea: Iron Kingdoms, done with Warhammer FRP 3rd Edition. I think it would rock.

Footnotes

¹ PS: thanks for the bitchin’ coat and hat, Luke. RIP
² Tunnel Snakes rule! *shove*

* = I was discussing this line with some folks the other day, and someone made an amusing observation: youngsters today reading this book for the first time will have no idea what Gibson meant by this. To kids today, a “dead channel” on TV is actually a bright blue screen, instead of the staticky fuzz of the 1980s. How sad, in a purely nostalgic way.

Note to self: pick up Spook Country sometime soon. Really enjoyed Pattern Recognition, so let’s see how another non-cyberpunk Gibson novel turns out.

Last night I finally got around to watching The Transporter, and now I’m kicking myself for having not seen this sooner. The melee fight scenes from that movie were fucking amazing in their choreography. Story was pretty generic, but I wasn’t watching it for the story. I also finished the first season of Leverage, and am really excited to see the new season. It starts next month, and has been filmed almost entirely here in Portland. For those who haven’t seen it, this show is essentially Shadowrun, minus the elves, magic, and cyberpunk. The premise: five specialists work together doing thief-like jobs in the modern day, usually as “pro bono” revenge jobs for folks that have been wronged by crime syndicates or soulless corporations. As their organizer says, “we pick up where the law leaves off.” It’s like that awesome movie Sneakers – in fact it’s a lot like that movie. If you like “professional job” heist-like things, watch this show. It really makes me want to play Kane & Lynch, but it’s too bad the story in that game personally offends me in its sheer awfulness.

Over the last several months, I’ve had this itch to somehow soon return to that Sky Pirates styled game that I set up way back when with Drake, Chris, Melissa, and Eric. That game, and the follow-up I had with Chris, Sam, and Kevin, was host to some of the more awesome moments I’ve seen in Savage Worlds game. It was also the first time I ever used Monkey Knife Fight to resolve mook vs mook combat in that system (which worked fabulously, btw). What keeps drawing me back, though, are the characters. The scarred overzealous fire-warrioress, the gambling deserter-soldier, the seemingly ageless and ancient “honored grandmother” with a knack for sucking the souls out of things, the twin pilot-adventurers and more, those were some damn fantastic characters. I’m still fishing out for another supplemental game, and I don’t think the second Shadowrun game will work out just yet. I think come August, though, I just might try and get this game back together.

(x-posted from Livejournal)

1. Count the number of fighters on each side, and set a single die down for each fighter. The die should equal their relative combat skill die (Fighting or Shooting).
2. Each side rolls all their dice at once. For each die that rolls a 4 or higher, remove the smallest die from your opponent’s dice pool. For each die that rolls a 1, remove that die from your own dice pool.
3. Repeat each round until one side wins or retreats, or the combat is otherwise resolved.

Should the story’s direct focus ever actually move to either side of this conflict, however, it is then handled as per normal rules. Meaning, if it ever actually becomes important to handle the combat with a more hands-on method, then by all means, abandon the Monkey Knife Fight and roll the dice as normal.

The basic format of the campaign was the only thing laid out initially: all the characters are crewing a large high seas sailing vessel in a “fantasy” world, sent on an extended voyage by one or more major financial and/or governmental interests.  Each character will have their own personal agenda in addition to whatever missions serve as the driving purpose of the voyage as a whole.  That being laid down, we put our brains together and designed the specifics of the setting itself, with each player having equal say over aspect they desired or wanted to avoid.  I was extremely pleased and impressed at how well we all worked together.  The absolutely wonderful results of our design session are outlined below.

The System:

We’ll be using the Savage Worlds roleplaying game system for this campaign, and more specifically the Pirates of the Spanish Main sourcebook’s rules for high seas adventure. I’m porting in the Cold City trust mechanics to better emphasize the clash of intentions and politics amongst the members of the crew.

The Setting:

• The game takes place in an alternate-history, fantastical version of Earth, in the year 1746. We all agreed that having a 1700s “colonial british” aesthetic was a grand idea, with lots of longcoats, hose, tricorner hats, etc. Essentially, a “Pirates of the Caribbean” British officer aesthetic, with a bit of Brotherhood of the Wolf thrown in. We primarily chose Earth simply because we’d be more familiar with the basics of the geography.
• We all thought some level of steam technology would be fun, so in more civilization-heavy areas, there are steam-powered automatons occasionally seen, and maybe a major train or two crossing Europe.
• Magic: yes, but it’s limited. The magic in the setting is “old school” and faith-based. It could be considered “folk magic” for the most part, and is mainly derived from rituals and lore stemming from the empowerments of the “gods” and their incarnations. Nothing huge and epic, more subtle and bizarre.
• There are a number of MAJOR historical differences. First off, Egypt was never conquered by the Romans, and still exists as a major Empire today. While its power is nowhere near what it could have been, it still rules the entirety of Northern Africa. This fact historically prevented the European whites from enslaving the Africans, even those of the unconquered south. Any excursions by Europeans to the south were repelled by Egypt, and many never returned. Thankfully, Egypt is somewhat isolationist in global politics, concerned only with the African continent.
• Another difference: the Crusades never really ended. Multiple Crusades have been launched over the centuries, with new religious leaders trying to rally a new spiritual Crusade every century or so. Each of them has mostly failed, but that is usually a rallying point for the next one.
• Yet another difference: no major European force has yet to effectively establish a heavy foothold in North America. Without a large slave force, expeditions to the New World were fewer and further apart than the “real” Earth. There are colonies from several nations, but none of them have united, and they’re all of various conflicting nations. The natives have proven too tough to conquer, and many many rumors have come from this New World. Some say the natives are united against the white man, some say the natives are just myths, and other say that colonies keep disappearing, with no word or sign from the old inhabitants. Any way you put it, the New World is a dark mystery, largely unexplored…
• The people of Northern Europe, mostly those descended from the old viking cultures, never quite progressed to the age of Reason. As such, most of the peoples of the north are seen as second-class peoples, and are frequently employed in crap work, if not outright slavery. A large number of Scandinavian and Norwegian slaves and sailors came across in the early voyages to the Caribbean, and after years of mixing with the natives, the people of that region are now of an odd “aztec-viking” culture and heritage. This means that the traditional “voodoun loas” never came to be, and instead we have a large number of strange local deities with a mix of both viking and south American folklore. Imagine a cross between Odin and Quetzalcoatl, and be afeared.
• Back in the Homeland, there are many Hellfire Clubs, which function as private gentleman’s clubs for the powerful and the elite. Several of them are rumored to be secret magickal cabals. The Hellfire Clubs are by nature exclusive men-only clubs, although rumor has it there is a secret women’s club out there with an extreme amount of power.
• It is indeed a man’s world: As was so with our history, women are still second-class citizens. However, those rare women who rise to positions of recognized power are among the most feared and respected leaders of the times.
• Even in this age of Reason, however, fear of the unknown is still prevalent. Folk tales hold great power and sway – the dark Americas are fine proof of this.

The Voyage:

• Setting forth from Port Royal in the Caribbean, the ship’s main mission is to chart a new course to the east. Those behind the mission have a special reason to believe that they can find a route to the Far East by seeing just how far the coast of the New World extends to the south. Several major interests have come together in this British port to fund this voyage, although each is believed to have their own ulterior motives.
• However, everyone knows about the ship’s true purpose, although few on the ship actively discuss it: Britain is seeking a new route to the east, because the Cardinal seeks to launch a seventh Crusade. The previous six Crusades have failed, each one taking the same route and suffering the same defeat. If a new passage can be found, however, then possibly the next attempt to reclaim the Holy land will succeed.

The Characters:

We hammered out some basic character ideas, but I’ll save them for a later post, after the players put more details into their roles and backgrounds. As it is, I am having each player make two primary characters in the crew. Additionally, I’m deliberately making the crew large enough to allow any number of random drop-in players to join in and play a character of their own. Hey, Lost does it, so can we.

That’s all for now!

We made the characters way back around the end of November, but only just recently started actually playing the game, as the holidays and various familiar commitments prevented us from being able to meet again after character creation.

• Drake as “Mishka Starov,” a Kossite ex-Widowmaker who deserted the army after seeing many ghostly visions of his possible future deaths
• Emma as “Rosalynd Hutch,” a Caspian Arcane Mechanik, recently graduated from the Mechanikal Studies school of Corvis University
• Robert as “Gregory Vascalho,” a Tordoran ex-watchman, fired for sticking his nose in places where the bureaucracy felt it didn’t belong
• Robin as “Captain Branduff Scully,” a Thurian river smuggler in search of his missing eye, which was stolen along with half of his soul by a wicked imp
• Ryan as “Quinlan Bralazzi,” a Rynnish Noble Wizard with a secret hobby of Infernalism and a sour attitude toward his lessers

In our first session (four or so weekends ago), we introduced all of the five main protagonists. All of them had been contacted through various means by a wealthy Magi from Five Fingers named Unger von Grendelbach. The Magi had recently acquired franchising permission from the Ceryl-based Strangelight Workshop, which focuses its efforts on the investigation and sometimes eradication of supernatural hauntings. Von Grendelbach sought out the five characters for his own reasons, and all of them accepted his offer.

Quinlan and Rosalynd hopped on board a riverboat owned by Captain Branduff, traveling from Merywyn (in war-torn Llael) and Corvis (in Cygnar) respectively. Branduff’s usual trade took him frequently up and down both the Dragon’s Tongue and the Black River, so he was in a prime position to get the two of them and bring them back with him to Five Fingers. After a quick combat scene in which the basics of the rules mechanics were introduced to the new players, the session ended with them arriving in their new city and meeting up with Mishka and Gregory, both locals.

At the beginning of the second session, after handling some basic administrivia, they were met by Urk, the fat goblin manservant of their new patron (von Grendelbach). Urk brought with him a magically-written message offering them employment should they be able to accomplish a training mission. According to the message, von Grendelbach had arranged for the purchase of a building which would serve as the perfect Chapterhouse headquarters for their new operation. However, there was a catch: the house in question was haunted by an entity most foul. Once the new recruits rid the house of the menace, it would be theirs to use.

After getting some alchemical healing for the wounded Captain and dropping off some basic supplies at the Rose & Thistle Inn (their benefactor had arranged for a week of lodgings for them there), they went straight to the old decrepit house. The Applebry manor was a two-story affair built on a gently sloping cliff, reached by following a lonely rocky path off the Beacon Trail Road on the eastern of the two Porpoise Isles.

They reached the house at night time, and the only lights around were the flickers from the two lighthouses on the far ends of the island. After a bit of investigation, they were quite sure that some malicious entity was infesting the house, and set in motion a plan to eradicate it.

24 hours later, after consulting with an insane “grymkin specialist,” hiring the services of a crabby pregnant goblin, and chopping out the steps of their staircase, the heroes manages to rid the place of the grymkin (called a Trapperkin) infestation. How did they accomplish this, you might ask? Why, they just showed the Trapperkin the power of a mother’s love – goblin love can pierce the spirit veil and save the day, after all.

They were officially commissioned by von Grendelbach to establish the Five Fingers chapterhouse of the Strangelight Workshop, and given an initial stipend and promise of weekly salaries. Now this is where the story really begins…

My Observations

The group took to the investigation process with baby steps, which I expected, since this is the first time we’ve all gamed together. Running games with a high amount of investigative content can take a few sessions to get into a steady rhythm with new groups, as it can take time for everyone to get used to each other’s gaming styles and preferences. On the whole, the sleuthing went pretty well. Most of the group consists of players that I’ve not gamed with before, but I think that I catered to a variety of styles and wants pretty effectively in that first adventure.

Follow-Up

It’s been a couple of weeks since I started this writeup, and we’ve had two sessions since then and moved to a Wednesday night schedule. The very next session after this one was mostly administrivia and shopping, and also saw Robert leave due to scheduling conflicts. I’ll write more on the last two sessions soon enough, but all things considered, this game is going well.

On Cannibal Contagion

I thought about it pretty heavily over the weekend, and today I finalized my decision to remove the “Samurai Slaughterfest” bit from the name of Cannibal Contagion. This has kinda been nagging me for a while now, but didn’t jump into my mind full-focus until I found my original design document for the game over the weekend. There are a lot of initial ideas from that document that never made it into the current vision of the game, or that I’m holding onto for a lot more testing and possible release in an expansion – meaning, a whole lot of extraneous add-on kinda stuff.

Among those stripped-out ideas are most of the things which I had envisioned that would give it more of a Kung Fu Samurai kind of feel. I had originally intended to make a game that was quintessentially Versus, the RPG. Over time, I realized that having such a niche game was not something I wanted to do all that badly, and I felt that the basics of the game could better be served by expanding them to the entirety of the Zombie Survival genre, and not just one awesome cult film that a lot of folks just haven’t seen.

So I’m going through and cleaning up the text to remove references to the “Samurai Slaughterfest” part of the name. The game text itself already mostly ignores that original intended theme, focusing instead on the classic Modern Zombie Apocalypse theme. As such, the edits really aren’t impacting the game as much as I had initially expected. And since I’ve always been calling it just “Cannibal Contagion” anyway, it hasn’t impacted my own perception of the game either.

So from now on, it’s just “Cannibal Contagion” – no samurai required. Maybe I’ll work the kung-fu aspect into a later expansion if the core game is somehow successful. The first planned expansion I envision is one that extends the game into a more sci-fi direction, so it might be a while for the kung-fu stuff.

On RPGs

Last night we had the very first play session for the new Sky Pirates campaign. I can say this without any ounce of exaggeration: this was the best game session I’ve run since the last session of our Little Fears mini-campaign. The end-of-session combat encounter took over an hour, but it was over an hour of epic goddamned sky pirate-y awesomeness, involving swinging from anchors, dueling sorcerers, mysterious cultists, mechanist riflemen, inventors-turned-almost-suicide-bombers, and cannons firing full force into the middle of a busy dock. I can definitely see where this game will be going, oh yes. In that last stretch of the session, I could really envision everything, and all it was missing was a fantastic score. I’m going to have to play with some playlists and see if I can put together anything more inspiring.

Campaign basics: We’re using the Savage Worlds rules set, modified for XP gain based on actual implementation of character abilities. The setting is a home-brew we’ve been using off and on for a few gaming projects, which I call the Undiscovered Countries. The basic gist of the world is that everyone lives above a massive layer of corrosive clouds, and most settlements are on islands that float along through sky currents (I swear I had never played Skies of Arcadia at the time we came up with this). Most of the cultures have a very mainland Asia feel, with a smattering of Euro-fantasy thrown in for good measure. A month ago in the setting, a great Empire which lasted almost a thousand years fell to the Dusk Revolution. Now, the Empire in ashes, folks struggle to merit a living on the Fringe Currents, amidst lingering conflicts with the Imperial Remnants, among other dangers.

On Video Games

This weekend I took Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy off the shelf again and gave it another go, and I’m once again addicted. I love games that have craploads of unlockable content, and this game definitely fits that bill. Psi-Ops has lots of skins and extra levels that can be unlocked as you master certain achievements, and I’m kinda disappointed in myself for not having unlocked these things in my first play-through. Heck, I didn’t even know they existed until I accidentally stumbled across some weird “Evil Garden Gnome” in a level and unlocked a telekinetic bowling alley level. From that point, I went back and checked a FAQ, found the locations of more gnomes I’d missed, and since then I’ve been happily unlocking challenge stages, co-op trials, character skins and more. Combined with the game’s fairly rewarding actual gameplay, I can see myself charging through this game at least twice. I’m currently paying through it as Scorpion on Hard Mode. Oh yeah.

All the good stuff aside, I do have some gripes about the game. First off, you only get five weapons: a supposedly “silenced” pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle, a machine gun, and a sniper rifle. The whole “silenced” part of the pistol is pointless, because once you shoot it, if it doesn’t kill the bad guy instantly an alert is triggered (see below). The shotgun’s good, but ammo for it is very scarce. I can’t even tell any difference between the Assault Rifle and the MG, except the MG has more ammo, and the sniper rifle is so wobbly that accuracy is an incredible gamble. The wobbly scope combined with the slow reload, limited capacity, and loud-ass firing make it a totally worthless weapon. Since you can only carry two guns, and you’re required to keep the silenced pistol as one of those guns, you tend to use either the AR or the MG as your default Main Gun, and that typically only varies based on which one has more available ammo in the particular game stage.

Additionally, once an alert is triggered, the enemies always know exactly where you are. I hate it when games do this crap, and it’s even one of the things that bothers me about watching The Crew play through Metal Gear Solid 4. In both of these games (and many, many others), once the alert is thrown, a nigh-endless stream of bad guys swarm your location, knowing exactly what crate you’re trying to hide behind. It makes stealth an even less-enjoyable feature of these supposedly stealth-centric games.

But hey, in all fairness, weapons are not the main focus – that spot is reserved for the amazingly addictive head-explody powers you have at your disposal. While the gun selection is weak, and you tend to just stick with the machine gun for the constant supply of ammo you find for it, you more often than not forget about it. Instead, you will most frequently find yourself opting to TK (telekinesis) enemies into the air and slam them repeatedly face-first into explosive barrels, or sneak up behind them and suck their brains out through their ears (ok, that’s kind of an exaggeration, but still, Mind Drain is the shit). And while the game’s actual stealth content is made next to worthless by the omniscient enemy AI, there thankfully aren’t too many stealth-required moments of the game that I’ve noticed so far. Thankfully, at least the stealth controls are both pleasantly simple and effective when the AI isn’t screwing it all up.

So in summation, if you want a fun psychic shoot-em-up with a variety of gameplay options, fun and addictive powers, good voice acting, amusing bad guys, and a fairly engaging story, Psi-Ops might just be the game for you. If you want a similar game with more focus on stealth over action, better implementation of said stealth, and an amazingly well-written story, I suggest checking out Second Sight, which I personally consider to be a superior game, although it lacks most of Psi-Ops‘s replay value. Both games are actually pretty easy to find in the bargain bins of your local game-trade stores, too.

In other video gamey news, I bought a PS2 to PS3 usb memory card adapter, and I’m thoroughly disappointed in my purchase. What a rip-off! I don’t think I’ll ever be buying any third-party products from the HVG2 company again. I’d take the damn thing back if I hadn’t purchased it from Fry’s, which is 45 minutes away in Wilsonville, and just not worth the gas prices these days.

Also, I’m really please that Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is #2 on Mobygames’ Top 25 All-Time Best Games.

On Technology

I want this. Badly.

On Life

Last night I learned that contact lenses work so much better when you actually wear them in the right eyes.

Looking for some mostly-gaming, comic laughs? Check out Orcusville.

- NPC

Reading: RunePunk
Wearing: Comfortable close-fitting clothes suitable for cycling. I love this weather.
Planning: The first session for the Sky Pirates game, this Sunday
Playing: Rule of Rose and Skies of Arcadia
Not Playing: The Siren: Blood Curse demo. Laaaaaaaaame. Tried it last night, and seriously, what’s with these crap-looking games not making the most of their platform’s hardware specs?
Writing: Some notes for various game design projects, mostly an Art List for the Cannibal Contagion book.
Listening: Pimsleur Spanish I
Watching: The Wire, Season 4. Man, the end of Season 3 almost brought tears to my eyes. One of the things that gets me the most is seeing people fail when they’ve worked so goddamned hard to succeed.
Anticipating: Dead Space in October.

Have you ever played a game that just bothered you so very very much that you could not begin to fathom how other rational people would actually enjoy it? For me, that game is Chronicles of Ramlar. I ranted about this one a year ago on my older blog, and just today learned that it has apparently received an Ennie nomination. Wow. Hey, at least it’s just for art, which to me has always been one of the least necessary parts of a role-playing game book. I’ve always been a fan of art-lite books, like The Burning Wheel, in which the art is always second fiddle (or even third or fourth trombone) to the actual game rules. On the other hand, games like Warhammer, D&D, Ramlar, and such all seem to be gigantic extravaganzas of art and display – and oh, look, here’s this widdle game you can play while you gaze at our over-stylized Punk Rock Fantasy artwork.

I think Game Art definitely has its place in art-driven games. Everway is a fantastic example of this, as the game is entirely based upon visual interpretations of ideas and scenes. Several diceless games greatly benefit from extravagant visuals, especially those games filled with esoteric and abstract images that make you wonder what the hell you’re actually looking at. But I don’t need a thousand and one stylized images to tell me what a guy with a sword looks like. Art should supplement the contents inside of a game book, and should never dominate it.

But Back to Ramlar. I’m not exaggerating (nor am I holding back) when I say that last year’s Ramlar demo was one of the worst game sessions I’ve ever experienced. The system was so cumbersome and redundant, and provided a gigantic obstacle to roleplaying and fun. It advertised features such as roleplaying-focused advancement and goal-oriented game-play, but in reality it was just a “kill them all and take their stuff” dungeon crawler with yet another tacked-on hit-location system. It makes me shiver when a game that is such a blatant fantasy heartbreaker rip-off of every fantasy game ever published gets nominated for an award of recognition for some kind of excellence.

Chronicles of Ramlar is an example of a disappointing (at least to me) game created and produced by some pretty spot-on nice guys. I met some of the folks and chatted briefly with them at Dragoncon in 2007, and really enjoyed the conversation. They were very enthusiastic about their product, and that’s always awesome. Then again, that crazy TV commercial guy in the question-mark-suit is pretty enthusiastic about the books he is selling, and they are a total rip-off (trust me, I found one in a library once, and it was all crap). I hope someday they make a new edition of the game which replaces all the cumbersome pseudo-tactical rules with better ones more conducive to the “roleplaying-driven” game they seem to want to promote. Until then, I’m still sticking with Savage Worlds and the upcoming Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game.

Speaking of Savage Worlds, I just this week acquired the RunePunk game setting and Plot Point Campaign book, and after a quick once-through I’ve decided that I really like what I see. The Setting Background section could use some editing, or even a complete re-write, as it tends to ramble off track frequently and make gigantic assumptions in what the reader has understood so far. I had to re-read that part alone a handful of times before I figured out what the writer was trying to convey (or so I think)

Aside from that one nag, the rest of the book is awesome. From my perspective, it feels like the movies Dark City and City of Lost Children mixed in with the Thief series of video games, and a whole lot of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station thrown in for filler. Maybe a dash of Hellblazer and Metropolis (the anime, that is) sprinkled on top, too. Really dark, desolate steampunk stuff here, with steam-borg factory workers socially clashing against posh spectacle-and-top-hat-wearing nearly-immortal aristocrats, and a whole lot of demonology and paranoia mixed in-between. I can definitely see using this stuff in the near future, and I think my local cadre of gaming enthusiasts will love it.

I think they’ll also love this:

Some miscellany…

I just looked through my AdBlock settings are realized that about 80% of all the images I’ve blocked are irritating and/or creepy livejournal user icons. Most of the remainder are MySpace ads.

“It happens to the best of us so it is nothing to be ashamed of. ” A customer just said this to me in an email (yes, I’ve taken it completely out of context). Another customer just now told me that he wishes they would make aerodynamic cellphones, so that when you throw them out of frustration they will fly much further.

There’s now a trailer for the Max Payne movie. This excites me so very much.

Savage Worlds House Rule: Helping Out

In order to save on the dice-rolling, I have a house rule for times when players want to work together to accomplish a task. Instead of each person rolling and adding, one main person takes the lead and makes the check. Each person helping out gives that person the following modifier to their roll, based on the helper’s die rank in the relevant skill or ability.

d4 = +1
d6 = +2
d8 = +3
d10 = +4
d12 = +5

(Or, for those who like math formulae, [X/2]+1, where X = the die size.)

If the helper is untrained (aka D4-2), then they draw a card to determine the modifier. Spade = +1, Heart = 0 (no mod), Diamond = -1, and Club = -2.

Good Times (anytime you need a favor!)

Friday night Avatar: good times! Thanks for bringing over those episodes, Trinity. I’m glad you’re finally getting to see Season 3. Soon you will understand why I love Zuko so much! And thanks for Skies of Arcadia Legends, Andrea. I’m enjoying it greatly. Plus, it’s good inspirational fodder for the Sky Pirates game (further below). Also, Bethany picked up a copy of No More Heroes for the Wii, and so far, it’s pretty sweet. My one complaint: so far, I don’t notice any strategy in it. There’s several things you can do in it when facing enemies, but mainly it seems that the “hit A repeatedly to beat them down” strategy is really the best tactic. Regardless, it’s bloody and brutal and lots of fun.

Saturday Metal Gear 4: good times! As much as I dislike the horribly convoluted and oh-so-terribly Japanese story of the game, it is damn pretty. I think if I could get past Kojima’s frequent masturbatory expositions and lectures, I could probably enjoy the gameplay. That OMFG NERDGASM AMAZING fight Beth showed me was, well, OMFG NERDGASM AMAZING. It’s so hard to resist the urge to post spoilers, though.

Sunday Tea Party: good times! Thanks for putting it all together, Sarah, and thanks for the excellent cake that I unfortunately did not actually eat (all the other sweets killed my appetite). Having squirrels come up to me and take food from my hands was pretty nice. Those little tree-rats are so gosh-darned cute.

Gaming

We’re unexpectedly making a return to the Undiscovered Countries! Yesterday we met to create characters for Torch, but after we realized that none of us were really all that interested in a more serious game, we played some cards and then came to a unanimous decision for a new game: mufuggin sky pirates. Yargh! All of us loved the idea, and characters were made with an extreme quickness. The new campaign will take place within the months following the events of the Dynastic Purge (from the Burning Wheel game that was doomed to never happen, sadly). Back again we go to the Undiscovered Countries, this time mere months after the fall of the great Dawn Empire, we follow the adventures of a group of outcasts on the Far Fringe currents, trying to make a living in the post-war fallout. Remnants of the Empire still vie for control of scattered holdings, rogue nobles struggle to retain their tenuous grips upon ancient familiar properties, remote opportunists seek to establish their own power bases on the edge of the known currents, and all the while, the common man tries so desperately to cling to his traditional way of life.

The characters have a small short-range island-hopper craft, and are trying to make a living in the Far Fringe currents in a time of post-war fallout. So far, Sam is playing a deserter soldier-turned-card-sharp, Chris is a scholar-mechanist, and Kevin is a historian monk. The group is strong on the social and smarts, light on the ass-kicking, and I like that a lot. A beat-stick meat-shield might round the party out, but I’m good to go either way. Lacking a major physical presence can make for some really excellent adventures, as they use “non conventional” methods to achieve their goals.

Also, Saturday was Free RPG Day, and I ran the Ice and Fire demo. That will get its own Actual Play post much later.

Any of you remember the time back in The Olden Days when video games did not have movie-like cutscenes? Remember the ads and trailers for those games, and how they contained footage of the actual game play of those games? Yeah, I do too, and I miss that a lot. Nowadays, it seems that with every new video game trailer I see, the developer is trying to sell me on some Masterpiece of Digital Animation instead of an actual game that I’m supposed to have fun playing.

Miscellany

A sure-fire sign that I’m getting old: I’m seriously excited by the fact that I enjoy a high-fiber diet. That’s right: get the fuck off my lawn.

And if you didn’t know, yesterday was my pseudo-birthday, 6 months before the real one that I don’t celebrate anymore. Why, you may ask? No, it isn’t because I’ve always been slighted for presents every year of my life due to Christmas being two days later, no, not that at all, and no I’m not bitter. Truth be told, it’s because every year on my birthday, I’m cold and alone and rarely ever have anyone to celebrate with. On my birthday I tend to end up getting a free drink alone at a bar while everyone else is either out of town with their families, or so chock crammed full of Christmas Cheer that I can’t stand being around them until they stop crapping out all those damned candy canes. I’m jealous of all the good times I hear others have, so in order to actually enjoy good birthday cheer, I moved mine to June. And no, I don’t care about presents, I just want people to spend time with.

Thanks to Bree for the excellent Birthday dinner!

Hell, it makes me want to custom-time the birthdays of my own children, even. “No sex between the months of March and May, baby.” Yeah, that’ll be healthy, totally.