Dukes of Biohazzard - Chapter 2, Part 1

CHAPTER 2

“BECAUSE THEY’RE COUSINS” -- Character Creation

As mentioned before, all PCs in The Dukes of Biohazzard are cousins.  Them’s the rules.  In fact, let’s call them PCs, or “Player Cousins”.  They don’t have to be first or even second cousins, but cousins they must be.  Because they are all kin to each other, they stick together, cover each other’s butts and stand up for the family name.
Or not.  Whichever.  

What You Is?

As you can well imagine, gamer that you are, there’s no shortage of booger-headed mutant freaks in this game.  Player Cousins may choose to be relatively normal baseline humans with virtually untouched genes just as easily as they can decide to be real weird-ass Rob Bottin nightmares.  Possibly, PCs can just lie somewhere in between--call them “genetic scratch-and-dent” cases.  If you’re making a character, choose this level of messupedness now.  NOW!  GO ON, CUZZ!  YEEEE-HAAAW!
By the way.  The choice you just made has no mechanical benefit or detriment other than to guide you on how to spend your dice, which you get to do in this next section, called--

Fixin’ To Get Ready

Just as in reg’lar Mini Six, all PCs start with 12D for Attributes and 7D for Skills and Perks.  The Attributes are the same as always, but with different names, like so:

Might	Heftin'
Agility	Squirmin'
Wits	Brainin'
Charm	Courtin'

Skills

Most skills from Mini Six are likewise available, although most having to do with technology more advanced than the carburetor in a Dodge Charger are going to get real lonely.  

Living in Biohazzard County (the in-game name of the setting) requires and allows its own unique skill set, though; here are some new skills that you may wish to use in your game.  I could only think of two, though...but that’s OK, because this game doesn’t need to go getting all complex and nuanced.

Wrasslin’ (Heftin’): Not just a form of combat but also a performing art, Wrasslin’ is an important skill to have in the post-apocalyptic thigamaplace here.  A good wrassler is not only a formidable opponent in a fight, but can also be an imposing presence in social encounters.  In some places, a good wrassler has certain social advantages, too...

Stillin’ (Brainin’):  As fossil fuels are no longer available (having all been consumed during the war...did I mention that?), citizens of the post-apocalyptic whatchamacallit must rely on alternative fuel sources, both for survival and for trade. Ergo, Stillin’ is the ability to make combustible fuel out of whatever biomass is available.  It can also be used to make hooch, which can also be used for trade or entertainment.  Don’t drink and drive, kids.

Perks

Of these, there are more.  How else you gonna trick out your Player Cousin with, like, eye lasers and stuff? (Note: “Eye Lasers” is not an available perk.  I am a liar and a jerk.)

Muscle Car (2):  You have a muscle car.  It’s whatever color, make and model you want, and it can be decorated as you please.  A Plymouth Duster with an airbrushed Virgen De Guadalupe would be nice; maybe a lime-green AMC Machine with...I dunno, like, how about an elephant stencilled on the hood?  That’d be different.  Working door latches are optional.  NOTE: Two PCs may each contribute 1 die to this Perk, and thus receive joint ownership of the car.
Gams (1): Ooooh, you is a sexy cousin.  Gain +3 to all social interactions with other sentient beings who are not repulsed by you.  Also, you can wear cut-off denim shorts without looking like you’re walking on cottage cheese hot dogs.  Note that “Gams” need not be restricted to female cousins, nor does its other form, “Pecs”.  
Muated Up (1-3):  You have a beneficial mutation, and you can even use it.  This is purposely left vague, because I’m less keen on lists of powers and more into makin’ stuff up.  So just describe the mutation (Third Leg, Cat Eyes, Tobacco Spit Gland) and what it does (bonus to balance rolls, see in the dark, spit a stream of foul ichor at a target within 15’) and you’re golden.  But hang on, here are some rules of thumb:

• Each die you spend on this Perk grants either a +3 bonus to a logically-related roll or set of rolls OR 1D of effect in damage or whatever
• You can’t have more than 3 mutations of mechanical consequence
• If you have a 3-die Perk, then you are Mutated Up Something Fierce and must describe yourself as such

Dukes Of Biohazzard: Interstitial

Chapter 1, "Because They're Cousins", is going to be the character creation chapter.  It's been started, but it's not done yet.

In the meantime, please enjoy this preview image:

The Dukes of Biohazzard: Chapter 0

THE DUKES OF BIOHAZZARD

A Mini-Six Game of Post-Apocalyptic Crick-Jumpin' Mayhem

INTRODUCTION; or, "What The Stink IS This?!"

Well, it's a Mini-Six Game of Post-Apocalyptic Crick-Jumpin' Mayhem. It was inspired by a comment made some years ago on a blog, or on a gamig forum, or something. It is driven by my desire to see how much of a game supplement I can write on my luch hour, while listening to "The Best Of Al Jarreau".

Yeah. It's like that.

More salient to your interests, "The Dukes of Biohazzard" is an action/comedy game set in a mutated future USA, where all the PCs are cousins, there are cars to drive and wreck, fuel to distill up in the mountains and semi-intelligent electric kudzu. If you're of a certain age, let me just say "Mad Max Meets The Dukes Of Hazzard At Thundarr's", and it will all make sense.

See?

THE SETTING; or, "Where The Stink does this happen?!"

Look, matey, I'm not gonna lie to you--this setting is pretty vague, but you've probably figured out that it's not the type of setting that ought to be anything BUT vague. Still and all, here's where we are and how we got there...

1980: WHOOPS!

The world was on the brink of nuclear war as the United States and the United Socialist Soviet Republics had been ratlling their giant thermonuclear sabres at each other for the last, like, twenty-five years. Tensions mounted, ideologies clashed, political alliances swayed and The Village People sold out stadiums. Truly the stage was set for the end of times.

From a remote base on the far side of the Moon, a team of Traxelian scientists observed the conflicts closely, using their advanced alien technology (they were aliens) to remain hidden and study the Earth's human population. The Traxelian Xenosociologists at the base had been gathering data for five years straight, looking for signs of intelligence. They'd found it right away, but hesitated to publish their results until such time as they had mapped a few select trends in human sociological development and thus had some nifty charts to submit with their papers. 

 

Of these scientists, one team in particular had been assigned to study the effects of mass media communications on societal development, specifically as related to variety programs. The team had been fascinated by the content of a short-lived television program starring American comedian Jeff Altman and Japanese singers Mitsuyo Nemoto and Keiko Masuda, who together comprised the singing duo Pink Lady (well, the girls did, not Jeff). The program recieved poor viewership reactions on Earth (not so on the Traxilonian base), and struggled to find a successful time slot for it. 

 

The Traxilonians struggled to keep up with the scheduling changes and soon became frustrated. In their efforts, they attempted to set up a surface listening station outside of the production studio--a compact device that would register and transmit tiny variations in the local environment. The team applied for clearance to deploy the sensor package, and received it right away. On April 4^th, 1980, the Traxilonian lander set down in Hollywood California, and began broadcasting via tight microwave beam to the Traxilonian base.

The signals were detected by the US Military, reported to the CIA, misidentified as a Russian plot, and caused World War III.

2012: DANG!

32 years later, Earth's all mutated up and stuff. It all looks like rural Alabama, only with glowing plants and weird messed-up creatures and like that.

This is the world of "The Dukes of Biohazzard".

MORE LATER!

Hail Eris! 23 Questions!

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
That's a toss-'em-up between the Pyrurse, The Adventure Funnel and something I've probably forgotten.  Yeah, that's not a single.  You wanna fight?!

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Just before Christmas.  The last time before that was in the Summer.

3. When was the last time you played?

The Lincoln administration.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

"Doc Rotwang!'s friends finally have time off concurrently and come over to game."

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Think of new and entertaining ways to propel the plot.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Whattaya got?

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting? 

Yeah...I'm not 16 anymore.  DAMMIT, THANK YOU FOR BRINGING IT UP.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Your question requires that I have a recent-enough memory of such an activity.

 

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

No, they're pretty respectful.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Make 'em go 'vroom vroom' and crash 'em into each other.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

I don't even bother anymore, it'll never get used.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

I'm now too depressed to think of funny stuff.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

"Philotomy's Musings", because I want to run OD&D next month.  HA HA HA HA HA!  HA!  AAAAAH, HA HA HA HA HAHAHA!

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Jim Holloway.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid? 

Nope!  If it does, they got badass poker faces.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

Ha!  Dude, that was sometime in the Pleistocene.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

The body I had when I was 16.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

HERO FREd and Theatrix.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Mexico City ca. 1983, Star Wars, New Wave music and not being 16 anymore.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

The kind who is active, engaged and never, ever quotes Spaceballs.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

 Yak wrestling.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

Yes.  But since time is linear, it cannot exist.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Yeah, but I keep those conversations short more for the sake of brevity and not being a dull, overbearing interlocutor.

That Girl's Hair Doesn't Let The Light Pass Through

...but the cruelest thing is that every time I listen to it, I move further and further away in time.

Type V Elephant In The Room

Has anyone else noticed it? 

No?

No one?

Anyone?

Just me?

I gotta wonder, 'cause every time I read about how D&D: The New Hotness is supposed to bridge all editions, I think of how Castles & Crusades...kinda...um...

...

...does that already.

Am I the only one?  'Cause, dude, I can slot any an' alla that D&D stuff into C&C, since C&C doesn't particularly care what edition your character is from as long as you have stats, a level, a class and an idea of what that class means.

Has anyone else thought of this?  Am I alone?!

AM I INSANE?!*

PICTURED: Rotwang!?

*ANSWER: Yes, but not in a rifle-and-clock-tower way. 

R E A D Y

I busted out the old 2nd Ed hardbacks one night in college; talkin' 1999 or early 2000, here.  I was running the game for some pals in the dorm, plus a girl from my Broadcasting classes (Megan Grady, where are you, baby?).  I fell back into the rules pretty quickly, which was, at the time, a bad thing.

The rules felt clunky; I can't tell you how, but something felt wrong, even though it was all familiar.  I started to feel the way I felt when I dropped the game ("like a greasy fingernail taco", as I used to say) in the first place.  More than once that night, I hanged my head and shook it and muttered, "I can't wait until Third Edition comes out."

Then Third Edition did come out, and I loved it, and I was the first person at my FLGS to buy a copy at the midnight release party, and I loved the new game and I playes it and played it and then got sick of it and screw that noise.

Only, now and then I pull those old 2nd Ed rules offa the shelf, 'cause unlike the 3rd Edition stuff, it's all still in my house, and I crack them open and I get to looking at them and I go, "Huh".

"...Huh!"

"Hmmmm...mm-hm."

...and all those feelings of crusty old dislike start to flake away, and my stance towards the old tomes softens; I start to see things in there which I always knew were there, but I see them now in a different light.

It's almost as if...as if--

--AS IF IT MAKES MORE SENSE TO ME NOW.

2nd Edition was virtually my introduction to D&D (it was not my first RPG; that honor belongs to Star Wars).  I had a copy of the Red Box, but as far as I was concerned, that was just as a preview of The Real Deal.  I got in on the ground floor on it, too, as this preview booklet came home with me from the comics shop on the day I decided to take the plunge.*  Once I got the PHB and the DMG for Christmas, I spent the next few weeks absolutely devouring them, ferreting out every rule, studying every procedure and absorbing, absorbing, absorbing.

Not all of it made sense--minute-long combat rounds, what?!-but all of it made magic.  I got ready, and I made it happen.

Eventually the magic wore off and I picked up Rolemaster 2nd instead, and then years passed and hi, I'm Dr Rotwang! and this is my blog. 

So it's easy (in fact, too easy) to dismiss my increasing 2nd Ed jones as mere nostalgia, rose-colored glasses.  But look, man, I don't roll that way.  I see its warts and all.  I see the good and the bad, and now and again I run into a blog post that serves to remind me of what I'm looking at (and thanks for that, Mike Hensley).  Now I am ready for real.

Before I started running AD&D, a schoolmate and gaming buddy cautioned me that it was a difficult system to run, and that I would have quite a challenge in front of me, and that he knew all this from experience.  I saw through him; he was blowin' me smoke to aggrandize himself, and possibly to intimidate me.  In a sense, though, he was right--but not for the reasons that he wanted me to believe. 

Don't ask me how...

...but I understand this game now.

And I want to run it again.


*I used to go to Waldenbooks and gawk at the games section, and the AD&D books always looked so...I dunno, so advanced.  The sight of those austere orange spines stood like a fence behind which only the mighty could stand.  Those orange spines were The Guardians of The Big Time, and I wasn't ready.

I Don't Understand Why The Internet Is Not Vibrating Like A Vegas Motel Bed Over This Announcement

For Reals.

2+3=X (Solve For X)

Hail Eris!


Yeah...I don't believe in any gods, but I make kind of an exception for Eris Discordia.  I don't believe in her--

"I'm a scientist, Ranger Brad..."

 --but I do think Discordianism is funny, and reading about it truly helped shape me as I am today.  Why, I remember when I was but a whelp of 20 Summers, when first I--


--what, the WotC thing?  Naaaah. 

EAT AT JOE'S: Irvania!

Look...I'll put it like this.  If you haven't checked out Dave Ferris' Irvania.com, what with its free wargames, wacky fictional nation and copious images of miniature guys with sticks and robots wearing ties...

...man, you oughtta.  Trust me.  This is some stuff, babies.

A Very Atheist Christmas

May yours be like mine -- Merrily spent with family, with food, with fun and with love. 

See?

Not evil.

I Am About To Live One.

[[[Sound 360]]]

"And here's a poster of the Landmaster from Damnation Alley."

Troy Allen had seen a lot of SF that I had never heard of.  He was older than me, and sometimes it seemed like his past had taken place in a long-gone neverwhen lost to me through time.

"I'm not familiar with that.  Was it a TV ser--"

"Aw, maaaaan!  You haven't seen Damnation Alley?"  Alan Rice, too, seemed to know of this distant wonderland; he was the one who introduced me to Troy, after all.  Maybe that's where he found him.

Troy smiled, a big-ass goofy smile.  He may have squinted with delight to have another shiny memory to share.  "It was a post-apocalyptic movie.  They had these vans, see, with the wheels...."

He and Alan went on with this little bit of my nerd education (nerducation?), there in Troy's grey-lit room in a little house somewhere in Harrodsburg, IN.  I couldn't tell you where it was, now.

Troy, man.  Troy knew a lot of stuff, and when he told me about stuff like this the gleam in his eyes and the glee in his voice made me want to fall in love with them, too--these ephemeral things that I knew I'd never see, these obscure and unknown tidbits of my geek heritage.  I'd written them off, though, as things of another world, never to be seen by me.

Standing in Troy's room on a cold winter day ca. 1990, I would never have dreamed that, when babies born that week would finally be able to get legally blasted at a bar, I would be idly browsing the DVD selection on the Monroe County Public Library's Bookmobile and that there, in orange and yellow, those words would stare back at me, plastic monolith of mystery revealed.

Troy doesn't read this blog.  But if he did, I'd say to him:  "HA, HA HA HA HA -- LOOK AT WHAT I FOUND!"

Almost Perfect

It's missing the header and footer images, and the NPC illustration was usually a cameo inside the frame, but I think it came out pretty OK.  Illustration totally swiped from the Star Wars Artists' Guild website, and modified a bit by me.  No offense, Blooburd.

ATTENTION ALL INTERNET

FREE CHARACTERS

Here are the PCs from of one of our (my wife's and my) Annual Halloween Games.  This particular one was inspired by those awful SyFy Original Pictures that we never watch, and it was about college students in the Australian Outback who met up with a lycanthropy victim who turned into a native wild dog.

The game was titled "Mandingo".

It was diceless, and the characters were described like this:

Facepalm²

First -- NaNoWriMo.  No go.  That's the fact, and I don't wanna talk about it.

Okay!  Now!  That outta the way, let me tell you about how FUCK CHANGELING.

This is Red Five. I'm going in.

You know...I've put this off far too long.

I've known about NaNoWriMo for a few years now.  I even have the book, "No Plot?  No Problem!".  I know that I can write, and should do so more often.

I also know that I am a perfectionist, and that I try too hard and shoot too high most of the time.

I need to stop doing that, and this blog has always been about that.   I need to step it up, though--I need to give myself that deadline, that freedom, that push.

I just learned to type a few months ago.  You know, home-row touch-typing?  Since our first family computer in 1989 and up until this Summer, I had always been a (very very fast) hunt-and-peck typist.  It was fun and it was funny, but touch-typing is a hell of a lot cooler.

I'm putting it to use.

I don't have a plot, but I have a theme.  Well, something like it, anyway; what I have is a loose concept, kind of a feel, kind of a...vibe.  I thought of it the other day, driving home from work.  I like it.  It's comfortable.  It makes little sense and that's how I like it.

I'm gonna write something funny, weird, bitter-sweet and rambunctious.  I'm going to play absurd fantasy games with my late childhood, the end of my teens; I will be following the same path that Walter Hill followed when writing Streets of Fire, as told to us by Wikipedia:

According to Hill, the film's origins came out of a desire to make what he thought was a perfect film when he was a teenager and put in all of the things that he thought were "great then and which I still have great affection for[.]"

In other words, I'm going to write my late teens the way they should have been, with robots and alien gods and ridiculous misadventures and all the crazy stuff that never really happened, couldn't happen and would probably break the cosmos in some way or another if it did happen.

Done rambling.  See ya in 30.

Dear Shatterzone,

What the hell is wrong with you?!

Seriously, dude.  Seriously.

So...you're talking about the card system, and how you determine initiative with said cards, and that, for such purposes, "S" stands for "Standard Scene" and "D" stands for "Dramatic Scene".  Okay, so what's that mean?  Well, you also say that Chapter 3 of the Rule Book explains the difference...but then Chapter 3 of the Rule Book plainly states that it's only going to concern itself with Rounds.

Wha.....?

Look...dude.  I'm not stupid.  I can suss things out, okay?  I sort of do that kind of thing for fun.  So I'm kind of up to the challenge of, you know, trying to figure you out, but then I look at how damage gets listed like "3 Wounds 7K" and --

--

-- I really don't feel like it's worth the effort.

I'll keep your cards; I can use those with D6 if I want to.  The rest of you?

Dr Rotwang! is very disappointed with you, Shatterzone.

The Cross and the Character Sheet: More on Religion and D&D

I considered that this kind of discussion really belongs on my other blog, but interested parties are likelier to be aware of this one and not that one, so for the nonce, here it stays.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on yesterday's post.  Allow me to address some of them.

Ryan Shelton sez...

Sorry Doc, I honestly don't get what you  don't get ;-)
Christianity, or any religious faith for that matter, is not the same as belonging to a fraternal club. Yeah, we both both rites and funny hats and codes of behavior, but religious faith is a way of life (or ought to be) not just getting together on Sunday for singing and fried chicken.

Right away, dude?  Thanks for having a sense of humor about this biz.  And I agree with you, in a way -- any day is good for singing and fried chicken.

When I do something I ought to be examining whether or not that fits within my way of life. If my way of life is one informed by Christianity, then why wouldn't I examine the activity to see if it fits?

Okay; I get that.  What I don't get is what's in D&D--or any RPG, for that matter--that might conflict with that way of life.  Why wouldn't it fit?  I ask this not rhetorically, but because I really don't know.


After making these statements, Ryan was aked by Kelvin Green,

Out of interest, would you also examine paddling a canoe or drawing a picture -- to use the Doctor's examples -- in the same way? That's the bit that I find most interesting; why is D&D singled out for scrutiny when it's just another hobby? Is it just a holdover from the Satanic Panic of the 80's?

Ryan replied,

Yes, of course. Perhaps I would not consider paddling a canoe with quite the same scrutiny, because it involves no real moral dimension, but yes.

Aha!  A moral dimension.  This helps things make a little more sense.

So if it's a morality thing, how is it a morality thing?  Is there moral dimension to pretending to be a...a space-dude, or a fighter, or an elf or whatever?   I'd consider it immoral--or at least unethical and, frankly, dickish--to break into someone's house and steal their stuff, but is it immoral to participate in an imaginary version of same?  If so, how?


Then along comes Stuart Robertson, apparently with a blue donut on his face, to express the following:

Most people want the option (although they might not always take it) of playing a character in an RPG that is "like them" but with a Fantasy / Sci-Fi paint job. It's why female gamers want to see strong female characters, non-white gamers want to see non-white characters, gay/lesbian gamers or players with physical disabilities want to see etc. etc. etc. I think it's the same thing for someone for whom religion is a more central part of their life. They want to see that the game includes characters like them.

OKAY.  THIS I can grok.  But then I gotta wonder, is it the game designers' responsibility to put that into the game?

You could say that, yes indeed, it is.  Or at least, they'll be more successful if there's room for all those characters.  Better yet if they never give a reason why not to include those characters.

I loved Mage: The Ascension, even though I was sometimes annoyed by its SCIENCE BAD stance.  But even then the designers threw me a bone--even though some of the villains (indeed, the major ones) evilbadwrong science dudes, there was not only room for good guy science dudes.  More than room, there were established good-science-guy groups.

But even without them, I was able to enjoy the game; most of the time I played a Hermetic mage, in fact.  The SCIENCE BAD nonsense was annoying but not an impediment; and anyway, when I was playing, it was MY GAME, and I made it into what I WANTED.  Again, that was sort of the point of gaming, for me.

So if you're a muslim or a christian or whatever and you want to play D&D, why not just say, "My dude's Jewish, so he doesn't eat the pork the merchant offers us.  But he'll eat the beef!  I bought him two plates."

I mean, after all, we're just pretending, for fun.

Apparently Oddyssey AKA Natalie Bennet is of the same mind as I (in this matter at least), as she chimes in:

I think some of the issue here is, "Is D&D compatible with Christianity" is a totally legitimate question, but the stuff that people look at when they're deciding is kind of nuts. Like I think there are some legitimate questions from a Christian perspective (caveat being that I am not a Christian myself. Mostly. I dunno what I am right now.) as to -- The big one being, Is this something that doing it is going to take me away from God and the people around me? 

If a game can take you away form your god, is your god that powerful after all?  It seems like a snarky question, but it arises at this point.  As for the people around you, do you mean will they judge you?  I thought only God could judge.

There's also, I think, some legitimate questions to be asked and considered about the way the game generates and handles moral content. Do I need to always run my character according to Christian ethics in order to be a good Christian? Or is it better to use the game to explore other ethical systems (or the lack thereof), or at least to mess around with them however I want because it's a game and it's for relaxation and the moral content isn't a big deal because it's not real people? Those are maybe questions with fairly obvious answers, but they're also, I think, questions that deserve asking if you're a person who has a strong moral/ethical worldview and wants to make sure that all your actions, every day, are in line with that moral/ethical worldview.

Fair enough.  I agree, the answers are obvious ones.  As for the matter of the ethical worldview, well...I get that, I really do.  I just think that, when the point of the game is to do whatever you want with it, then the question is far less important than "Do we have enough Mountain Dew for everybody?"

Lastly I will address rsteve76's comment, and I leave it for last because -- really, dude?

You were born an atheist? Really? If anything, you were born an agnostic. Atheism literally means "no God," vs. Agnosticism, which means "no knowledge." Unless your first words were "there is no God," I'm guessing you were an agnostic, if that.

Semantics.  You wanna argue semantics.  I accept -- I am a fan of trying hard to say what I mean.
 


I maintain that I was born an atheist because I was born not believing in any gods. Sure, I had no knowledge of any, either; in fact I had knowledge of very little at all, except for "HUNGRY" and "MUST WAIT A FEW YEARS FOR NEW WAVE MUSIC".
 

Okay so not that last one.

"Atheism" means "without a god".  Atheists are called that because they've arrived at the conclusion that there probably isn't a god, because the lace of strong evidence makes it a strong likelihood.  "Agnostic" means "without knowledge", and I argue that all atheists are also agnostic by strict definition because, hey -- we don't know.

But you don't have to be an expert in invisible textiles to clue in that the emperor is naked.

Both now and throughout recorded history, the majority of people have had some sort of religious belief. Inact, finds of prehistoric man suggest they had some form of belief in the supernatural and possibly an afterlife.

Just as we have long exhibited tendencies toward aggression, tribalism, artistic expression, curiosity, critical thinking, gluttony, genius, mob mentality, bad taste in clothes, prejudice, creativity...


"True atheism," as we know it today, is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. So all of the evidence suggests that mankind, by nature, is a religious creature, and that for one to be a true atheist, he must have it taught out of him.

Please provide that "all the" evidence.

So your assertion that atheism is the natural human state is a fantasy that goes against all of the evidence. But then, that's atheism for ya. ;^) 

Nice.  That's -- that's brilliant, man.  Smack-talk.  Good one.

I really hope you're being sarcastic.

Religion, D&D and Crash Helmets for Snails

Over at Blood of Prokopius, fellow gamer nerd, blogger and human being FrDave wrote a post entitled "Is Christianity Compatible With D&D??

Therein, he muses about whether, you know, Christianity is compatible with D&D.  It's an interesting post to be sure, and one that provokes thought.

In me, it provoked a thought as follows:

"Uh...why...does it have to?"

Seriously.  It makes no sense to me.  I...I just don't get that.

If I, as a teenager, had read that bit in Greyhawk/Supplement 1 and/or Holmes that says--

All vampires, regardless of religious background, are affected by the cross which is sovereign against them.

 --I would have been very put off by it.  I would have bristled at it, resented it, been outright angry about it.  It would not have wanted that intrusion of real-world faith and religion in my fantasy world; that's what gaming was sort of about.  Not a retreat from reality, you understand, but a place where I could exercise my creativity, where I could arrange the furniture to taste, so to speak.  I already had enough of Christians pushing into me in everyday life¹; why did they follow me into my hobby?

These days I wouldn't react as strongly, mostly because I can look at it and say, "Yeah, not in my game" and move on.  But even that's not the point.

The point is that I simply cannot fathom why it needs to be worried about in the first place.  What does one have to do with the other?  Gaming, as an activity, is that -- an activity.  It's like paddling  a canoe or drawing a picture or doing something else that brings you joy.  It's not life-or-death, damnation-or-salvation (it may be fun-or-boredom, though).  Why does a snail have to get fitted for a racing helmet?

Maybe I just don't understand the religious mind.  I get that some religious folks (and I'm not singling out FrDave here, 'cause I don't roll that way; if I had beef with him, which I most unquestionably do not,  I'd take it to him personally, privately and in the spirit of convivial discussion) have to check everything they do against their religious beliefs.  "Is it OK for me, as a Jew/Christian/Muslim/Zoroastrian/Etc., to undertake action x?", where x may be reading a given book, eating a given food, going to a given place or what-have-you.

But I do not get WHY.  And I especially don't get why gaming has to go before the review board. 

Look -- I understand that the "Satanic Panic" was a very real thing, and that some people really believed that D&D and other RPGs were somehow evil, or gateways to devil-worship, or whatever type of woo.  I saw a bit of it first-hand.  Once, in high school, a very pretty girl who was actually talking to me on a regular basis and who had me crushing on her totally torpedoed the whole thing by warning me not to play D&D because, in her words, if I cast a spell in the game then my spirit was actually casting the spell and thus defying God.  I...still don't get that. 

On another occasion, when a Christian schoolmate was attempting to make a point about D&D's evils, I invited him to examine my 2nd Ed. PHB. He was welcome to show me what he thought was evil about it.  He shrank back away from the book, as though I were holding up a dead rat.  I asked him, "What's the matter?"

His reply:  "I don't want to touch it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm afraid I'd get involved with it."

Man...I knew where my fantasy life ended, but these guys...?  

So, yeah, it was a thing.  I guess it still is.  But I suppose that, because I am an atheist (which, incidentally, is how I was born, in much the same way as I was born a human male), this stuff will never make sense to me.

It's a game; you play it.  It's a hobby; you indulge your fancy through it.  It's an interest; you read about it.  You can say the same for chess, for scrapbooking, for the history of the American Civil War.  Does Christianity have to be compatible with those, too?

I...man. It just-- huh?!

Seriously. I am bamboozled.

---

1 I will listen to opposite points of view up until it's clear that the speaker or content is a) full of baloney; or b) being pushy. When I get an earful of both, I get cranky.^↩

The Wizard is Undeterred!

You saw this, right?

NO?!


SEE IT NOW!

This Is What A 1-Mile Hex Has In It

...whew.

Over at The Hydra's Grotto, Steamtunnel (dude who writes the blog) asked, "How Much Adventure In One 6 Mile Hex?"  He remarks upon how large a 6-mile hex really is, and wondered about the utility of a 1-mile hex for purposes of sandboxery.  I subsequently commented upon how mind-bogglingly bad bad bad bad BAD I am at judging distances.

So.

After a few hours (I think) of GIMP, Inkscape, Google Maps and learning some basic math (!), I can show you this image:

Click for 5.24MB of way too much time on my hands.

This is a 1-mile hex (from side to side) drawn around my house.


You don/t have to live in this area to see what all is there, but I'll clue you up:  There's part of a marina, a load of condos,  couple ponds, a goodly chunk of a 10,750 acre lake (biggest in the state, as it turns out), some tennis c- no, a lot of tennis courts, bunches a'trees and some undeveloped land.

Just outside of that hex are an elementary school, a house secluded amongst trees and more lake.

So.

How much adventure can you fit inside of a one-mile hex?  Well...assuming that your PCs are tennis aficionados, I'd say "plenty".

So I Hear There's An Arthurian RPG

I never really felt any heat for Pendragon.  It's not that I disparaged it, or had a low opinion of it -- I just didn't, you know, want some.  Just like sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

I just finished reading Lyonesse, and have Madouc and The Green Pearl coming on the Bookmobile tomorrow.  So my Pendragon temperature is changing.

I don't have the game, but I have BRP and I have GKP's The Book Of Knights.  So I can probably get into some Pendragon-y trouble if so I desire.  Plus, nothing stops me from running some C&C in an Elder Isles-inspired setting, upon which I have already decided.

Hmmm...




...hmm.

Thinkin' Trekkie Thoughts: Who Plays the Captain?

If you didn't know that Fenway5 aka C. R. Brandon, author of Rogue Space and other games, has released the beta of Far Trek, then you should know that Fenway5 aka C. R. Brandon, author of Rogue Space and other games, has released the beta of Far Trek.

I'm reading it right now 'cause I finished Lyonesse (which was THE BUSINESS by the way), and I'm pretty happy with it.  I was thinking related thoughts as I took my coffee mug to the sink just now and had this idea (which may not be knew and in fact may have been published before, but it's on my mind at the moment):


Q: Who gets to play the Captain?
A: Everybody.

'Fact, the Captain is not only played by everyone but CREATED by everyone, together.  All the players collaborate on creating the Captain's personality and so on.  That way everyone has a handle on him or her, which is good because of this next paragraph.

During play, control of the Captain, and all the decisions that he or she makes, is shared by the players.  It can either be communal, such that whoever wants to be the Captain can do so at any time, or it can be by turns.  Everyone gets to speak for their Commanding Officer, and so on.

Okay, back to reading.

This Was Fun To Make!

I dunno what it'll ever get used for (probably nothing, 'cause I'm so @#*&% lazy), but it looks cool, huh?

Yeah, I ripped off exactly what you think I ripped off.

Double-You. Oh. Arr, Dee. Up.

You need this today.  You need it.

See?

I told you.

I'm Reading Lyonesse and --

It's all, like -- DAAAAAAMN...!

-- it is BAD.  ASS.

Not in a...you know, like a Leon/The Professional kind of way, or in a "The Golden Age of Wireless" kind of way.  No, no.  The best way I can parse it out it is thus:

It's bad-ass in a "Bob Ross Totally Schools That Canvas With Some Phthalo Blue" kind of way.

Look -- the plot is dense, but so engaging as to be astonishingly navigable.  The characters are interesting and compelling.  The setting is misted with a sense of history, permeated with substance and depth.  And even though (or perhaps, because) there's no real action in the, you know, KA-BOOOOSH! sense of kinetic action, the plot unravels with a genuinely seductive pace.

It's all in the pacing.

The plot develops at a pace that seems slow...until you realize that you've been reading non-stop, and watching the world and its people and its details and its travails and its history and its everything being peeeeeeeeeeled open and revealed to you in --

-- Bob Ross.  All mellow, he'd take his trowel and kinda drag it over the canvas, and BAMMO HAPPY LITTLE TREES?

Just.

Like.

That.

I just want to keep reading so I can find out what happens next.  In fact, why the hell am I sitting here typing this when I could be reading the next cha--

Dr Rotwang! Presents THE FINAL WORD ON HOW TO BE A BETTERER GM GOT-DANGIT

Take off your pants and run in the opposite direction, 'cause that way lies madness.

One Cool Thing From The 1990s

Look, don't get me wrong -- I like FATE 3.0 juuuuuust fine.  It's a great use of FUDGE, and some might say an improvement upon its progenitor.

I will not argue, because I agree, really.

But still...

FUDGE, in its most basic form (like it was when I downloaded it from ftp.soda.berkeley.edu on that late Spring afternoon in 1994, on a NeXT computer at the IU Student Union) is --

-- look.  There's something to be said about a game that gives you a fully-playable character with no more effort and paperwork than this:

Name:		Sequinus Bwappfelshire
Occupation:		Wizard	FATE POINTS:		5
SKILLS
Conjuring		Good				+1
Knowledge (Planes)		Good				+1
Abjuration		Fair				0
Research		Fair				0
Tailoring		Fair				0
GIFTS & FAULTS
+	Wizardry			Can cast spells
+	Amulet of Planes-walking			User can cross planar thresholds 2 times per day
-	Perfectionist			Has a hard time accepting when a task is done, and keeps fiddling with it; Good (+1) or better Willpower roll to move on

Honest, man, it took me longer to figure out how to make OpenOffice Writer do the cool split-cells thing than it did for me to write this character up.

He's ready to get into trouble now -- thanks to FUDGE!

What Does A 0-Point GURPS Character Look Like?

In all the time that I played GURPS, which I did with considerable intensity, I never once wondered what a 0-point character would look like.  (And if I ever did, I must not have spent a long time wondering.)

Tonight, I was looking through GURPS IOU and came upon the section that discusses appropriate point levels for characters in that milieu.  Local Citizenry, the book states, would rate 0-100 points.  I began to wonder...then, I popped open GURPS Character Builder and started, uh, buildin'.

So!  Meet Jerry Raymond:

Jerry Raymond
(0 Points)
Age 22; 5'8", 145 lbs; Dude's so average-looking, he may as well be invisible.

ST: 9 [-10]	IQ: 11 [10]	Speed: 5.00
DX: 10 [0]	HT: 10 [0]	Move: 5
Dodge: 5

Advantages

Charisma +2 [10] (Reaction: +2); Common Sense [10]; Voice [10] (Reaction: +2).

Disadvantages

Chummy [-5]; Struggling [-10] (Starting Wealth: $7,500); Duty (Minimum Wage Job at a grocery store) (9 or less) [-5]; Weirdness Magnet [-15].

Quirks

Never wears turtlenecks; Chess player; Quiet; Likes redheads; Sleepy Drinker. [-5]

Skills

Musical Instrument (Keyboard)-10 [2]; Carousing-9 [1]; Driving/TL7-10 [2]; Detect Lies-10 [2]; Chess-11 [1]; Writing-11 [2].

Description

Jerry's an average guy. He likes sports, he's kind of quiet, he's a bit of an artist and likes to hang out with his friends.

But the talking broccoli in his fridge, the time that a Martian princess rear-ended him at the grocery store, and the regular wrong-number calls from Steven Hawking and Eleanor Roosevelt's ghost? THOSE things are obviously NOT normal, and they WEREN'T his idea, and he kinda wishes they wouldn't happen.

But they do.

So...he deals with it...just like everyone else.

So I guess he lives in whatever town IOU is in, and maybe his life and the University intersect a lot.

Hmmm.