More Mini Six Love: The Willow Connection!

Okay. Y'know how I said the new Mini Six Bare Bones has some campaign settings in it? Well, they're all based on recognizable settings. The standard fantasy setting, in particular, is very very obviously inspired by A Fantasy Movie That George Lucas Made In 1988.

That's right -- "Rust Moon Of Castia" gots some Willow in it.

NOW, WAIT! It's not, like, a total rip-off of Willow. If it were, I wouldn't be mentioning it. No; I'm mentioning it becuase it takes some of the core ideas from Willow and makes them BETTER.

Well, for gaming, anyway. Here, lemme 'splain.

I've always wanted to play a game based on Willow; I have spoken warmly of Allen Varney's The Willow Sourcebook, after all, and have trumpeted its merits. Trouble is that what makes the world cool is kind of what already happened to the characters in the movie; it'd be hard (and lazy) to just up and duplicate it at the table.

So my idea, a few years ago, was to run a sequel to Willow. In a world untouched by Chris Claremont, the movie's characters are all NPCs: Sorsha and Madmartigan are Queen and king of Tir Asleen, only Madmartigan's been missing for years (and is suspected of -what else?- philandrering); Willow is busy learning to be the High Aldwin of his village; Elora Dannan is a teenager manifesting kewl powarz or whatever. Burglekutt is still a choad. For conflict, I would re-introduce Bavmorda -- breaking out of Witch Jail or wherever it was that Willow and Raziel sent her via the ritual Of Obliteration, she's gearing up for revenge with all kinds of extra-dimensional nasties on her side.

Whatever. I never followed it. because...whatever.

Aaaah...but "Rust Moon of Castia"...! Now we're talkin'. "Castia" presses the reset button in a most definitive way -- different world, very similar concepts. The Radiant Queen and her Scarlet Horde have taken over the kingdom, and she's turned the great city of Devmora into a multi-tiered fortress, from where she seeks out the 13 "vessels", females who bear the Mark of Radiance -- prophesied to...I dunno, undo her, I guess. Meanwhile, this, and I quote:

Tarsis Elon: The last of the four fortresses to fall, it suffered the
worst of the four curses. All who once lived there are now encased
in translucent stone, alive but entombed. For each year that passes
in the outside world, these poor souls age a single day. If any are
chiseled free time comes rushing upon them bringing immediate
death by old age. Still, more than a curse was left to watch Tarsis.
Monsters, minions, and shadows without name haunt this
doomed sanctuary. Rumors abound about what is still kept here.
Some claim a great vault filled with gold, others speak of lost
magics. Even if only a cache of ancient weapons, it would be a
great fortune to those fool hearty enough to try and claim them.

Add Brownies, little folk named Hannedyns ("Out of the way, Speck!"), stats for a two-headed leviathan and some hairy trolls...

...aw, who am I kidding. You're not reading this anymore. You went to downlod it and read it yourself, right?

Mini Six Bare Bones: IT'S DAMN MEATY!

DUDE!! AntiPaladin Games has a new "Bare Bones" edition of Mini Six available. Ha! "Bare bones" my eye. It's 38 pages long and includes campaign settings and --

-- Stop reading this blog post and GO DOWNLOAD THIS NOW. Well, first read this: Tip of the energy dome to Mike's Amazing RPG Fun Pad for beating me to it. You're a good man, Mike.

OKAY STOP READING GO DOWNLOAD GO GO GO.

The "A"

Because it's important to me.

Introducing Duke Hardcastle!

Here's a bit of fiction I wrote...uh...one time, I forget when. One of those things that just pops out, y'know? Go ahead, read it. Short. In English. Easy.

By the way: No, he's NOT Zap Brannigan -- for reasons that WILL become clear.

-1-

Captain Duke Hardcastle leaned forward in his command chair and watched space go by on the forward view screen. He rested his chin on his fist, and took a moment to collect his thoughts. His fingertips closed on a toggle switch on the chair's arm, but before he could switch on his log recorder, the bridge door swished open.

Hardcastle recognized First Officer Lana Vavoom's footsteps; the click of her stiletto-heeled boots was most distinctive. (Vavoom's boots were not Starfleet reg, but Captain Hardcastle and his crew enjoyed many privileges as a result of their track record.) He could see her hips swaying in his mind's eye, and he delighted in the image until she came to stop at his elbow.

"Captain," the brunette purred, "I have just finished reviewing the data scanned from the Hesperus." Vavoom leaned forward and placed a clipboard on the arm of the chair, brushing his arm as she withdrew. Hardcastle looked up in time to see her smoldering eyes linger on him with want. He supressed a smile.

"Thank you, Commadeer Vavoom," he said. He took the clipboard and looked it over. His left eyebrow lifted. "Sabotage?"

"So it would seem, Captain." Vavoom cocked her hip in his direction. "I have prepared a detailed breakdown of my assessment. It's in my quarters," she breathed, biting her lip, "if you'd care to -- "

"Excuse me, Captain," said Chief Communications Officer Lieutenant Anjelica Sanchez, turning slightly in her chair and pointing a dangling foot at him, "we're receiving a message from Starfleet."

"On-screen, Lieutenant," he replied. She smiled coyly and winked at him, her hands working the controls.

The stars on the forward view screen snapped away and were replaced by the squint-eyed, chubby face of a middle-aged man with male pattern baldness.

"Captain Hardcastle!" the man fairly squeaked. His eyes roamed around the bridge. "How are...things?"

Hardcastle stood. "Admiral Hutchens!" he said, "Things --" and here he followed the older man's eyes, which rested squarely upon Ensign Svetlana Svobodova (more precisely, on her thighs) "-- are well."

"I'll say," said Hutchens.

"Yes. To what do we owe the honor of your communication, Admiral? Admiral?"

Ensign Svobodova tossed a quick look at her captain and turned to hide her legs under the helm control panel. Only then did Hutchens clear his throat and speak.

"Ah! Yes! Hello, Captain Hardcastle."

"Hello, Admiral." Hardcastle rocked on his heels and placed his hands on his hips, all but glaring at his superior. "How can my ship assist you." He made the statement sound like an order, implying the "hurry up and tell me how" that preceded it.

"Er..." Hutchens hesitated; he squeezed one eye shut, looked askance with the other, then appeared to look at his shoes. "Ah! Captain Hardcastle."

"Just a moment please, Admiral," Hardcastle said. Then, to Lt. Sanchez: "I'll take this in my quarters." He turned to leave the bridge.

"Aye, Captain." Sanchez worked the controls and, under her breath, voiced the thought that every other woman on the bridge clutched with red-hot desire:

'I wish he'd take me in his quarters.'

* * *

PSSSSST! Billy Idol's "Cyberpunk"!

Oh, ho ho ho! You'd forgotten aaaaaaaall about this album, hadn't you? AAAAH, HA HA HA HA!! Monster that I am, HERE IT IS AGAIN. Ha!

Ha ha! Ha.

I actually don't like this album.

Truth be told, it was a fairly innovative bit of work. Released in 1993, it was one of the first (if not THE first) albums to include a multimedia packet -- if you purchased the special edition, you got a floppy disk with some clip art, interviews, sound samples and stuff. (I didn't buy that one, though.) So it had that going for it. Other'n that, it wasn't well-received.

Oh, I ran out and bought it with a quickness, though. Why? I was 18 years old when it came out, it was a Billy Idol album, and it was called Cyberpunk. SOLD, sucka. WHAM! Like that. I'd been into the cyberpunk aesthetic since the late 1980s (figure '88 or so) and was really into it when 1993 rolled around. I had read Neuromancer*, Count Zero and Burning Chrome, loved Blade Runner, was totally-motally into cybernetics and was just generally in wubb with the whole thing. Also I owned this:


And so there I was -- late July 1993 -- dashing out to the store, buying the CD, rushing back home, plopping it in the CD player --

-- and I listened to it, like, twice.

Well, no, wait. The big single from it, "Shock To The System"? I listened to that a little more. It wasn't too bad. It starts out with the sound of breaking glass, then some guitars and an up-tempo beat. Billy screams and screeches on it, growls some kinda vague lyrics inspired by the 1992 Los Angeles Riots with some askew references to Rodney King aaaannnnddd... uh... he says "c'MAWN!!" a whole bunch, and you kinda bob your head for a while and maybe you picture motorcycles driving really fast but then it's over and the rest of the album is kinda meandering and limp.

I know all of this because, this morning, I grabbed it off the shelf and popped it in the car stereo for my drive to and from work. I skipped around a lot, and ended up thinking,

"This ain't got no pancake mix."

Ah, well. There's always --

*Reportedly, this is more than Billy himself did, despite naming a track "Neuromancer". Check this bit I found on WikiPedia:

As part of press junkets promoting the album, Idol reportedly insisted attending journalists be familiar with cyberpunk fiction. It was also revealed that Idol was not entirely as familiar with the genre as he had proclaimed. William Gibson reported in an interview, "A London journalist told me when Billy did his 'Cyberpunk' press junket over there, he made it a condition of getting an interview with him, that every journalist had to have read Neuromancer...Anyway, they all did but when they met with Billy, the first thing that became really apparent was that Billy hadn't read it. So they called him on it, and he said he didn't need to..he just absorbed it through a kinda osmosis."

¡EXTREME VENGEANCE, CABRONES!

Hey, everybody! Remember all the fun I had playing Extreme Vengeance back in the late 1990s? I sure do! (I hope you don't. That'd be weird.)

I dunno if it's because I saw a TV spot for last night during The Expendables last night during Futurama, or if it's just another example of how my "brain" "works". Whatever the cause, I started thinking about this game today, and had the urge to throw together a muy macho one-off movie, why not.

Funny thing, though -- the urge is not a nostalgic one, and it's certainly not a "rose-colored glasses" thing. Extreme Vengeance is flawed; I knew it then and I know it now, and in neither day does it matter. The game is just fun.

You roll a bunch of d6s, make ridiculously bold pronouncements about your character and his/her abilities, beat the crap out of extras, get bonuses for uttering cheesy catchphrases and generally eschew "serious" gaming for the "jawsome" kind.

True -- you can engage in shenanigans of that sort no matter what game you're playing. It's not about rules; it's about attitude. Now, I don't mean "attitude" as in "the thing movie badasses have" (although that factors into this style of play), but rather a free, unconcerned attitude towards fun.

Pure fun. Unselfconscious.

Pantsless.

I want some of that fun. Playing Extreme Vengeance can gimmie some of that fun. I have the rulebook.

All I need is time and cohorts, and it's problem solved.

CHAINMAIL Headscratch Theatre

So...I don't get it. 1 figure = 20 men, right? And (for instance) each 4 light foot that attack 1 heavy horse roll 1 die, and kill on a 6 -- but do they kill ONE OF THE TWENTY HORSES THAT THE FIGURE REPRESENTS, or THE WHOLE FIGURE WHICH REPRESENTS 20 HORSES?

I dunno, man. I'm not stupid, but I feel like I'm missing something.

So the other week I read a battle report of an attack on the moathouse. (You know which moathouse. You read blogs like this one.) It sounded all cool and stuff and I thought, "Hey, I gotta check out the Chainmail, what with its ties to OD&D and stuff." So I got a copy and started reading, but I'm not quite sure I get it.

Why don't get it?

WHY DON'T I GET IT?!

I Wanna Play A Wargame!

Dammit! C'mon, now! Miniatures on little bases, movement measured in paces, multiple figs to a base!

STRIKER! Hordes Of The Things! Dangit! I wanna play those!

GRRRRRRRRRHHHWHHAAAARRRRRGGGFFFGGGGGG!

...maybe if I stopped, you know, howling...

I've Got Something For Everybody.

I mean that in two ways.

WAY NUMERO UNO:
I have this blog and I never update it. I never update it because I feel like I have nothing to say. That's a misconception on my part; I have lots to say. Hell, all I do all day is think of things to say. They're just not not as much about gaming all the time.

No! Wait! I'm not leaving the hobby. No way, no how. Bury me with my dice (you'll need an extra coffin). No, what I mean is that, at present, gaming isn't taking up any of my time, because I can't seem to get a damned game in. Yeah, I know, I complain about that a lot, and whose fault is it that I --

Ah. No We're not gonna do that. I have Sundays free for gaming. Not everyone else does, damnit.

As a result, my gaming-related thoughts are kind of...well, not in a holding pattern, just kind of mediocre. There's nothing new up there, just normal stuff that I can't make happen.

I'm kinda sore about it. I'm suppressing the depression, really.

"So why don't I just blog about other stuff for a while," I think to myself, "and just see what comes out? Just use the blog as a dumping ground for anything that I think of, not just gaming stuff? It's not like anyone reads it anyway."

RESOLVED: I will post more frequently, but I am not Jeff Rients, Zak S, Jim Maliszewski, James Raggi or anyone else who gets people excited about the hobby. What I am is Dr Rotwang!, and that mofo is freaking nuts and damn he says some crazy stuff.

And everybody likes damn crazy stuff.



WAY NUMERO TWO-O:

You know that DEVO just released a new album, right? It's called "Something For Everybody", and I have a copy. Here, look at it.


I keep listening to it and thinking, "No WAY these guys are in their fifties or whatever." This album kicks ass, plainly stated. It is energetic, snarky, cynical, clever and witty, exactly like you remember DEVO being.

Funny thing: The everything about the album --the songs, the cover, the band's new uniforms-- was chosen by committee. The boys released the material and had the fans choose what would be in there, hence the title. The result is freaking awesome...

...with one exception.

Track 9.

"Cameo".

Now..."Cameo" is not a bad song, it's just...it's dumb. I mean, it sounds like DEVO, but it sounds like DEVO just kinda being deliberately WTF -- and not, to me, in an interesting way. What is this song doing here, when "Watch Us Work It" (you know, from the Dell commercial) was an option? (You can buy the LP, which is struck on clear blue vinyl, and get a bonus CD of the songs that didn't make the cut, but I don't have that. I also misspelled 'vinyl' the first time around.) It's the only song I skip. Bah.

A small problem, made all the smaller by the strength of the other tracks, especially "Fresh", "What We Do Is What We Do", "Human Rocket" and "Something For Everybody" -- each and every one a devolved earworm if ever there was one. Geez, just typing the word "Fresh" has the song stuck in my head...

My daughter loves this CD. You don't need a daughter to share it with, though.

RESOLVED: Getcha some.

Wow. Just -- just WOW.

DOODLE TIME! (Aunt Betty's Birthday Edition)

Long story, short: My Aunt Betty, with whom I've always been close, wanted handmade or homemade stuff for her birthday this year (our family picks a theme for gifts, see). My Mom told me about it last night; the party was today. Ergo:




She liked it.

The Game I Would Have Designed When I Was 16

Oh, man. My brain at sixteen.

Suddenly and out of nowhere today I was thinking about this girl I knew from my MUSHing days, and about the characters we'd affect and their backstories and stuff. That was in my late teens, early twenties, really, but my mentality wasn't far off from 16.

Then I thought of what Luc Besson said about making The Fifth Element -- specifically, that it's the movie he wanted to make when he was a teenager, and in fact he started writing it when he was in high school.

Then I thought of the girl and the characters again, and it hit me -- I don't think like that any more, but it sure was fun. It was freaking epic, and angsty, and romantic and sweeping and personal and --

-- and very sixteen.

And it would be fun to do it again.

I used to have a grand dream of being a filmmaker myself. That dream looks like this now:


-- but I can sift through the rubble and salvage a few things that I could use to build a campaign setting:

• Starships, big and small
• Some kind of techno-magical do-dad with a far-fetched explanation
• Themes of virtue and frailty
  
• A huge-ass scope, probably even multiversal
• Idealized, epic, dramatic romantic love
• Great forces, most likely representing abstract concepts given form, clashing with each other with the fate of the multiverse at stake
• High melodrama featuring friendship, betrayal, alliances made and broken, expressed on both the galactic and personal scales
• Pyrrhic victories aplenty
• Teen angst and soap opera
• Rubber science
  
• Duels!
• Swords!
• Blasters!
• Adolescent commentary on the inherent weakness of humanity, and society's tendencies towards apathy/closed-mindedness/conformity/repetition/stagnation
• Tragic romance
• More teen angst
• Dashing space pirates and wizards, blowing shit up in space
• Did I mention the starships?

In short, sort of like Star Wars and Fading Suns Meet Square Pegs At Planescape's House.

Soundtrack by The Alan Parsons Project.

Notes On Printing Your Own Booklets, LBB Style

There's a swell tutorial on how to assemble your own home-made gaming booklets right here, and let me tell you that it took a funnin' trip to the Death Star to find it on the web (I ended up stumbling across a link at Grognardia. Thanks, Google.)

It's a swell tutorial indeed, very simple but then so is the job itself.

Or is it?

Before you embark on your own DIY LBB/pdf-to-booklet project, please take this advice from someone who just completed one such project and has the sore hand, tight shoulders and stratospheric blood pressure to prove it:

1. Using Adobe Reader's "Print As Booklet" function is easy to do, unless your printer -like mine- has a thing for grabbing more than one damn sheet of paper at once, which, when you're printing the second side of a double-sided sheet, can eff up your page count like the Deuce, which will require you to count the remaining pages, print them by hand, make sure that you feed the sheets back in with the right facing and orientation and account for the fact that the numbering on the pages themselves is not always the same as the numbering of the .pdf's pages themselves.

2. In lieu of an extended-reach stapler, paper clips will do just fine -- just as the above page suggests. In a pinch, though, your wife's heaviest beading wire will do the trick.

3. No ice pick? Use a thumbtack.

And here's the big one...

4. Trimming the outer edge of your booklet with a hand-held paper cutter and getting anything other than a chewed-up, nicked, uneven, ugly-ass edge is pure damn ridiculous Moon-talk fantasy. And it's not even the good kind of damn ridiculous Moon-talk fantasy, with the Selenites and the Moon-princesses and the Cavorite and stuff. No, no, no, this is self-deception of the most annoying effing kind. That jazz ain't happenin' unless you're some kinda laser-guided robot with monofilament paper-trimmers for hands.





Again: Tutorial = good.

Trying to do it when you are an easily-frustrated perfectionist maladroit = not so much.

STAR WARS: The Last Laugh

I've been a Star Wars fan practically all my life. It wasn't always easy.


I saw the movie in the Summer of 1977, probably not long after it opened, which was 33 years ago today. I was only...what, 2½ years old then? No matter. Mom, and later Dad, took me anyway. Several times. By all accounts, I was quiet, still and well-behaved, just watching my movie.

My love was immediate and unconditional. I was enraptured. Seeing Star Wars awoke in me a life-long passion for the fantastic, the adventurous, the awesome. Hence gaming and stuff.

Now...that is fine and dandy for a little kid, and maybe even for a pre-teen. Right? Ahh, but you get into junior high, and the rules change...

In December of 1987, aged 13, I came back to the United States from a six-year-long traumatic stay in Mexico. (That would be a whole other story; in fact, it could be a freaking Lifetime Network movie, with lies, betrayals, abuse, psychics and the FBI. This is one time when I am really, seriously, not joking. Regardless, we'll not touch on it here.) Needless to say, I came back in a pretty bad emotional and psychological state. Compound it with culture shock (Mexico City to Bloomington, Indiana -- WHAMMO!) and the general pants-wetting horror that is adolescence, and...uh...

...I was in a pretty weird place, tell ya the truth.

Luckily, I had Star Wars.

It was something to hold on to, something solid, something constant. Something that I still understood. Something that my peers knew about, and to which we could relate.

Except when they didn't, which was a lot of the time.

I took a lot of flack for liking Star Wars back then. The other kids were growing out of it, so they saw my fixation with Star Wars as kind of...I dunno, silly? Infantile? Ridiculous? Hell, I don't know. I don't know but that they teased me about it, and no doubt it helped to create for them this image of me as a weirdo, outsider, nuts, whatever.

I persevered. I cherished Star Wars as a playground for the imagination, especially after I got the RPG. At that point, that universe became a retreat as well as a hobby to help train myself to be the storyteller and fantasist I decided I wanted to be...and to keep myself from really going nuts, if you dig me.

Eventually, I fell in with the other kids who still liked the movies, and other fantasy, science fiction and such: The geeks. The nerds. The comics fans, the Trekkies, the gamers.

Oh, I was laughed at some more. I persevered. I just kinda did my thing; it was working for me.

Ha! Check out the Star Wars guy. But it's for kids! Nobody likes Star Wars anymore!








...who's laughin' now, ya jerksticks?

Holy Mother Of Pearl In A Sidecar Going 80!

DAMN! Have you seen the Open D6 Resurrection Wiki? It looks like this:



Okay, so now you've seen it. But have you explored it?

It's great stuff. Increasingly chock-full of neat D6 material, including links to NEW games like Mini Six, Cinema 6 and Fang: The Role-Playing Game of Epic Horror. The links section alone is aces.

I say, aces. C'mon. Look.

This is The Doc tellin' ya.

The Coolest Thing I've Seen In 35 Years, 7 Months And 14 Days

...was this.

BRP: Mutant Gorilla

Okay, Brutorz Bill, here you go: Frederik Von Congo!




Frederik here is a Normal-level anthropomorphic mutant gorilla, suitable for play in any campaign that has room for an ennui-filled German mutant noble gorilla who enters archery competitions and likes fast cars and military history.

I rolled up Frederik's stats based on the ranges given in Basic Role-Playing's bestiary chapter, although I changed the INT to 2D6+6 (which is normal for humans) and added EDU. I rolled a couple of mutations for him (they're on the back, which I didn't scan), and he ended up with natural venom (POT 2D6) and regeneration (1 HP per minute). I really didn't have to fudge anything else.

I could easily have ratcheted him up to Heroic level or better and added superpowers and like that, but I kinda like where he was going.

There ya go, homey!

BRP, Swashbuckling, and Delayed Explanations

My wife and I took Basic Role-Playing out for a spin last night. I was GM; I made up a buncha cockamamie bee-ess about fantasy-analog 1600s Europe, Musketeers (but without muskets), intrigue and The Fair Folk. I engaged in little to no planning. Wanna know how it went? If yes, keep reading.

THE PREMISE
Basically, and such as it is: There used to be faeries all over the place, until the humans and the fae fought. Now the fae live on the other side of "The Veil" (like you do). That worked out OK except that faeries are assholes and they keep crossing over to muck things up. They aren't really welcome and they're up to something malicious, so obviously good guys with rapiers and big-ass plumes in their hats have to settle their hash in the name of The King.

For the human world, I declared that it's a mash-up of Musketeer France, swashbuckly Italy and Spain In The Age Of Stuff Like That. So basically like 7th Sea only not. The faeries, on the other hand, were inspired both by my days playing Changeling and an excellent article by Ken Hite (it's in Suppressed Transmission Vol. I). Then I decided, "Fights and Intrigue!" And I was done.


THE SESSION
Pretty simple. Amber's character is a veteran Muske--well, okay, something like a Musketeer (remember, no boomsticks). The Marchioness Marise d'Soub...Soubl...something gives her a simple, but important task: Take a message to a minor noble dude named Don Diego Alameda, and make sure no one takes it but him. Most importantly, though, her Mission Objective #0 is to see WTF Don Diego is up to because he's been acting squirrelly.

So she goes to his villa in the city, takes a couple of mooks (Mooksketeers! Ha!) with her, and proceeds to proceeding. Don Diego's doorman, Veccio, blocks her right off -- Don Diego is "not feeling well", and can't be seen. Amber's character (crap, I forget her name!) is all, like, nuh-uh, look at my signet ring, I get in where I want. Veccio folds, lets the three envoys into the courtyard, and goes off to talk to his boss.

Things get squirrelly for sure. The horses get panicky, there's a weird smell coming from the house (it keeps switching between cinnamon and mold), she hears a weird sibilant voice and Don Diego saying "Send them away!"; finally, some flowers on the house start moving on their own and changing color.

Here, Amber is unsure of what she should do. Clearly there's faerie magic (i.e. bad guys!), but she's not sure what authority her character has. So I say to her:

"Pretend you're a police detective like on CSI, you go to a trailer, and you can smell meth."

Boom. She busts down the door, takes one of the mooks (we named him Lorenzo), and heads upstairs. Paintings on the wall are moving of their own accord. They top the stairs into a hallway, and a figure in a peacock-colored cloak and with glowing blue eyes literally glides out of a doorway, spots them, and casts a spell.

Lorenzo blows his Resistance Roll; Amber's character makes it. Lorenzo passes out. The faerie throws up another hand and the floor, the walls and the ceiling melt together into a wall in front of Our Heroine -- but she sees through the illusion and it disappears to reveal the faerie making an escape.

Amber's character lunges forward and attacks, impaling the fae and killing it outright. The creature gasps, its eyes go from blue to purple, and its body crumples inward like a piece of wrinkled paper.

Don Diego, who keeps saying "It wasn't my idea! I resisted!" has a lot of 'splainin to do, so he is...not arrested, but taken to see the Marchioness. The faerie has a sword, which Amber confiscates, but it turns to ice and melts.

The End.

THE SYSTEM
I ladled on the optional rules last night, at least as far as character creation is concerned -- Heroic Level, Increased Personal Skill Points, Personality Type, Higher Starting Characteristics and Skill Category Bonuses. It made creation take a while but it was worth it.

Gameplay was a breeze. A pure, simple freaking breeze. N % chance of success; roll equal to or less than N. I looked some stuff up, but that was because I wanted to, and was pleased.


SUMMARY
Awesome. We're definitely doin' that again. Oh, sure -- lots of questions were left unanswered, but that's okay.

That's what downtime is for, right?

I Would Be A Better Starship Captain Than Cameron From "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Pfffffsh. Geeez.

...okay. So the other night I was watching Star Trek: Generations, because AMC has it on repeat or something and, at the time, there was nothing else on which was appropriate for my kid.

So there's Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, right, and he's captain of the Enterprise-B, and he's taking it for a spin to Pluto and stuff to show it off to the CNN-Of-The-Future guys. The Shat is there, too, and he's kinda tubby but he's still Kirktastic.

So the ship picks up a distress signal from a couple of ships that are stuck in...like...a time/space...anomaly...fart-rip or whatever. Mere minutes outta spacedock, this boat can't get a break; comes with the name, I guess. Anyhow, there's the distress signal, right? And I'm sitting there watching (I haven't seen the movie since it came out, so I remember none of this), and I put my Captain Hat on.

Pictured: A problem I solved before a Starfleet graduate could.

And I'm all, like: "Hail them. Tell them we're on the way; Helm, do that." I mean, I'm captain of nothing in real life, but -- hell, that's what you do when you are the captain of the freaking Enterprise.

I mean, that what I think. But the real captain? On the TV screen, in the movie, what does he do?

He starts to choke up and he's, like, "OMG not prepared kthxbai".

...

...really? I mean, really? Okay, so maybe his ship is ill-equipped, but, damnit -- you at least answer the hail and show up to try something. Because YOU ARE CAPTAIN OF A SHIP.

Well, then he's told that Enterprise is the only ship in range, and that the ships' hulls are getting all busted up. THEN he starts shaking like a...thing...that shakes, and he starts hemming and hawing and looking at Kirk and --

-- and I'm on the couch, thinking, "HAUL ASS! WARP SEVENTEEN OR WHATEVER AND GET INTO TRANSPORTER RANGE! Where'd you go to Space Guy school, the Hello Kitty Institute?!"

Meanwhile, a ship's hull buckles under the force of a spatio-temporal warp nexus and over 200 people totally die.

So Cameron (okay, the character's name was John Harriman, but all I could think of was lumps of coal) breaks. He breaks, and looks over at Kirk, to ask for help.

And what does Kirk say?

To paraphrase, he says: "Haul ass, get into transporter range." They do, Scotty saves 47 out of 150 people, so it's too little, too late. BUT IT WORKED.

...

...and I'm more of a Star Wars guy, even.

"Let my Cam-'ron-gooooooooooo...!"

What's that you say? Do I own a copy of FASA's Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator? Why, yes; indeed I do. Funny you should ask...

IT'S DURANMAS DURANMAS!

OHH MY GAAAAAAWD it's totally DURANMAS DURANMAS LET'S ALL PARTAAAAAAY but what the hell does that even mean?!

Does it HAVE to mean something,
when it looks like this?

In my mind, it's kind of like "Talk Like A Pirate Day", only it's 1980's themed. It's an excuse to have a good time, one which involves your old DEVO LPs and your copy of The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension and possibly leg warmers if you're into that sort of thing.

"Laugh-a while you can,
Monkey Boy!

It's another excuse to watch music videos from an era when "music videos" were, you know, actually on MTV.



It's a celebration of, and an indulgence in, everything that was cool and silly and weird and awesome about the 1980s.


Never mind the intro, blah blah blah. Skip to 0:50.

But enough explanation, no more justification. Duranmas Duranmas is totally rad. There.


Totalmente radical.

Go forth and party.

Basic Roleplaying and Duranmas Duranmas!

Yeah, I know. I neglect this thing. But, hey! There's a new logo! That's good, don't you think? It's all...like...80's, kinda SF, and then with the dice, right?

...you're right, it does need tweaking. Anyway, let's blog.

I'M THINKING ABOUT CHAOSIUM'S BASIC ROLEPLAYING
...and about how basic it really is, and how that makes me like it.

So, dig: It's 384 pages, right, so how can that be basic? Surprisingly, it is. This game is damned easy to prep and run. Here's how it works: Every skill is rated with a percentage, so success happens on a d100 roll of equal or lower value. Roll real low and you get a Special success; roll really low and you get a Critical success. Roll 00 and it sucks to be you. Other than that, it's variable damage versus hit points and like that, armor reduces damage and so on.

There are plenty of options for, you know, powers and magic and stuff and things -- and lots of optional rules for tweaking the basics (different 'power levels' for characters, more hit points, Sanity, etc.) collected from the various BRP-based games throughout history.

I like it. I like it A LOT.

More later. Break's over.

REMINDER: DURANMAS DURANMAS IS MAY 10th!
Sure, nobody really cares except maybe me. But if you love you some 80's and some New Wave and having a good time, then why not cop May 10th as an excuse to do so? That's what it's for, after all -- for celebrating that stuff. C'mon, man -- all the cool kids are doin' it.

Interstitial Doodle -- An Emotional Self-Portrait (Work Edition)

At Work
#2 pencil on Post-It
2010

Doodles, Part 7 -- I Like This One The Best

Doodles, Part 6 -- Marginally Better Than A Punch In The Face

Hitting Rotwang! in the face = COMEDY PLUTONIUM.



I like how this one came out. I used my Rapidographs.

Doodles, Part 5 -- Return of the Awful Comics

Hey, guess what my wife found today? No, not that. She found my SD card! The one where I'd saved all those cartoons! 'Member?

...no?

You know, the ones I was posting a little over a year ago. You can get reacquainted by clicking here for Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. They were silly comics that I was drawing at work, starring people from work, which I made up as I went along and passed out at work to keep spirits up.

At work.

They sucked, but people liked 'em anyway. No one complained when I posted them here; in fact they asked for more.

I guess that means I can continue the series...



There. I got more, but I'm gonna stretch 'em out.

WHOA, -HOA-HOA-HOAAAAAAH -- Paging Eldrad Wolfsbane!

WAAAAAIT, waitwaitwaitwait. I just -- hang on, now, I just read this comment from Eldrad Wolfsbane on 10 January of this year and I was like, WHAAAA--?!

Having played the 1st, 2nd, snd revised version, and having one of the very rare 3rd edition Star Wars RPG I played em all.

WAAAAAit, waitwait, go back. Say that again.

Having played the 1st, 2nd, snd revi --

NONONO, the end part.

-- I played em all.

NONONO, BEFORE THAT.

having one of the very rare 3rd edition Star Wars RP--

What third one? Where? From WEG? No offense, me old China. but about this, I gotta know.

Do tell, chief!

Behold -- Why I Am Not A Professional Writer!

I wrote this thing that I'm about to post, see. It's not bad, really, if I may say so myself; I mean, it's no Eye of Argon. But there is one major flaw in it -- here, you tell me:

CHAPTER 1: DIRTY DEALINGS IN ROBOT CITY

Cornelia had a rep as something of a slut.

More than her activities and promiscuities (which really weren't many, except for that one time with Aldo Graves in the YMCA parking lot), it had to do with the way she walked and the way she dressed: Those skin-tight potato-sack dresses, the stocking tops peeking out from under the hems, that boomba-boomba-boomba hip-sway when she walked down the street. That, and she was friendly to men -- but that was because she liked them, not because she wanted to...well, maybe just a little. No more than anyone else who was as healthy and young and vibrant and 23 years old as Cornelia was.

Really she was just a social creature. She liked to see and be seen; she liked to speak and be spoken to. A little wink, a little laugh, a party here, a phone number there. Cornelia hit the town a lot; people who knew her could count on seeing her anywhere, from the video arcades of Rasterville to the glittering glass domes of Little Mars.

As to why she was wandering around in Soroyamatown that night, well...that was kind of unusual.

"Hi!" she said brightly to a sleek, shapely and half-dressed femroid, "Can you help me? I'm kind of lost."

The femroid scanned her quickly, shooting a horizontal laser line from her slitted optical panel and passing it over Cornelia top-to-bottom, as though the human girl were a UPC at the grocery store. "I'll say you are," the femroid replied in a husky vocoder. But the sexy robot girl didn't shoot her, or even walk away from her, and neither did her femroid companions hanging out in front of The Input/Output.

"Yeah." Cornelia said, and reached into her purse for a piece of paper, which she uncrinkled with overlong, overpainted fingernails. "Can you tell me how to get to, uh..." she squinted at the paper, turned it upside down, then sideways; she tilted it this way and that to better catch the neon light of the robobar's sign. Finally everything was just right, and Cornelia continued. "...to Five-and-a-quarter-Inch Floppy Joe's?"

"Why you lookin' for Floppy Joe's?" demanded one of the other femroids, leaning forward with her metal hands on her metal hips and nearly popping a metal nipple out of her flimsy yellow top. "That's not a place for meat!"

Cornelia shrank away but held her ground. "Look, I'm just doing someone a fav-"

"Well, we ain't do you no favors, skin-slut," the other spat back (well, buzzed, really), "so why don't you engage your steppin' off subroutine and--"

"Mute yourself, Troniqua," said the first femroid, and the other made a clicking sound but otherwise went silent. The first femroid leaned against a light post and crossed her high-heeled foot extensions at the ankle. "Why do you want to go to Five-and-a-quarter Floppy's?"

Cornelia looked at the paper as if the answer were written there, but it wasn't; so she shrugged and replied, "Um -- well -- see, this guy, he's my friend and he, um --"

"End," said the femroid, holding up a sleek, shiny hand. "I can calculate the rest." She pointed down the street and gave Cornelia directions.

"Okay," said Cornelia, "thanks." She smiled, and held up her hand close to her face and wiggled her fingertips. "Bye." Boomba-boomba-boomba, down the street she went, high heels clicking.

Troniqua made a rasping, grating sound, like a cup full of gravel being spilled on a shopping cart -- the robot equivalent of a derisive huff. "Floppy Joe's."

"That girl's gonna be news," said the first femroid. "But it won't be good."

* * *

Maybe the femroid had lied to her, Cornelia thought; otherwise, why would she have been walking for ten minutes and still not gotten to where she was going?

"Okay, wait," she muttered to herself, and stopped on the sidewalk and looked around. The trouble was, not only was she not familiar with Soroyamatown (she'd only been here once, months ago, and that was to buy some meatwhistles from Gordy the Fly) but also every street looked the same: A jumble of neon, of impossibly sexy chrome-covered robots, of excited tourists bussed in from Tanjookistan, of blinking signs that screamed LUBE LUBE LUBE and those weasel guys that sell stock on the weekends and--

"Hey. Cornelia."

She heard the voice; better, she recognized it...maybe. She looked around, over the sea of neon-splashed silver arms and heads. She didn't see anyone...

"Over here."

She took two steps to the left and peered around a mule in a sombrero.

She saw someone, and sighed.

"Heyyyyyy...!" she laughed, and made her way along the sidewalk. "I am SO. HAPPY. To run into you," she smiled.

* * *

"...recovered thirty thousand dollars in black-market tofu," a man was saying on TV, and his eyes moved back and forth because he sucked at reading teleprompters but the station manager couldn't fire him because he was the owner's nephew. He continued, "four semi-automatic flashlights and a late-model LeSabre. No one was hurt."

The image on the screen cut suddenly from the man to a woman in a red jacket and a huge, cream-colored lace cravat at her throat. She took an imperceptible breath and said, "Police today are reporting the disappearance of Cornelia VonPablo, daughter of wealthy magnet magnate Pablo VonPablo." The screen changed to show file video of Cornelia dancing on a multi-tiered dance floor, then going boomba-boomba-boomba past Mother Theresa, and finally waving at the camera from inside a cherry-red Lamborghini. Text at the bottom of the screen read Cornelia VonPablo -- Probably a Slut. The anchorwoman's voice continued, "VonPablo was last seen last Saturday at La Dolce Pita in Ogilvie, around six thirty pee-emm. VonPablo was expected home by ten but never showed. Her family reported her missing on Monday morning; authorities say they have no leads.

"Coming up next," the anchorwoman said as music swelled behind her, "The results of the landmark Wayne Newton/T-Rex fight, and why chicken prices are projected to skyrocket this winter -- right after this."

The TV picture changed to an ad for cleaning fluids, and the jingle filled Lance Manley's living room.

He didn't hear it, though, nor did he see it -- not any of it. For at the moment, you see, he was being punched at by a Martian.

Okay, so -- that main flaw?

I NEVER WROTE ANY MORE OF IT, BECAUSE I NEVER FINISH THINGS I START.

D6: They Shaved Rotwang!'s Brane!

UPDATE: I wrote this in a hurry at work. Therefore, it's even MORE stream-of-consciousness than my normal posts.

Yes, more D6 stuff. Specifically, that Spycraft thing and the cyberpunk thing. Yes, Erin Palette -- THE CYBERPUNK THING.

Okay. Car chases first.

Converting Spycraft's chase mechanics to D6 will, after some reflection, be easy but not as cut-and-dried as I originally thought. Reason being this: In Spycraft, the effects of a maneuver are often influenced by the results of an opposed roll (e.g. "Lead is increased by a number of length's equal to the prey's margin of success" and such). Now, in d20 games, your rolls are only gonna go so high; but in D6, that Wild Die can push totals up pretty far.

Trust me, I've seen it.

So I have two options, here: One, implement a rule that caps Wild Die results (inspired by Spycraft, incidentally); the other, to remove the "effects depending on margin" thing, in which case I'd need to rethink the effects of the maneuvers themselves.

Thing is -- I'm not a rules-monkey. In other words, I never really dream up alternate rules and stuff; my geni--uh, I really think more in terms of the presentation and the story and the shooting at pirates and the swooning and stuff.

I'm an artist, not a draftsman. Dig?

Still...what if...? So! Let's watch as I muse about this stuff out loud. Shall we? C'mon, it'll be fun. All the cool kids are doin' it!

1. WILD DIE CAP: This is simple. With this rule in place, your first re-roll of a 6 on the Wild is free; however, if you roll another 6, it ain't gonna re-roll unless you pony up a Character Point. PROBLEM: Under the normal rules, a Character Point already gives you another Wild Die to roll. So this idea...I dunno. I mean, it sounds clever and stuff but...naaaah. Let's put this back in the oven.
2. CHANGING HOW MANEUVER EFFECTS ARE IMPACTED BY BLAH BLAH: This might be the better way to proceed. It's possible that the range of rolls won't be THAT different, and at any rate, no driver/pilot/rider/etc. is ever going to make his car/plane/battlechicken move any faster than it possibly can go.

Hm. Playtesting...?

Now...the cyberpunk thing.

I have been struggling with my personal idea of a cyberpunk campaign for about...oh...ten, twelve years? I can never settle on a system, I keep waffling back and forth on the goals and activities for PCs...it's a mess. It's in my head, but it's more of an atmosphere than a place.

Hrrrrg.

Long story made short, Erin Palette talked me into not sucking and just saying OKAY DAMMIT I'LL USE D6 AS MY SYSTEM DAMMIT THAT'S IT DAMMIT DAMN DAMN DAMN (I added the second "damn") , so that's kinda taken care of -- kinda.

I say "kinda" 'cause -- look. Cyberspace, okay? Hacking. I want hacking rules. I want cyberspace cowboys to have neat, fun rules that are kind of a game in themselves; I want the 'deck to matter, I want the programs to matter. I want said cowboys to have options -- do I take a worm up against this data fortress, or do I want to smash at it with a jackhammer -- and how do these work in game terms?

That kind of thing.

I thought about a simple opposed roll mechanic with circumstantial bonuses being applied based on what programs are involved -- like, say, database so-and-so has a weakness that is easily exploitable by cypher jammers (whatever those are), so a hacker using one such might get a +2 or something. The idea is to make the activity of netrunning a kind of battle between the cowboy and the database, or AI, or other cowboy -- the better combatant wins, but everybody wants to have the edge when it comes to gear.

Very cyberpunk.

Luckily, Peter Schweighofer kind of already did a lot of my work for me when he wrote up Dueling Blades, which is on that page I linked to just now. Dueling Blades works like this: Two fighters make opposed rolls, and the winner gets to have an effect on the loser. That effect varies by the margin of success, and the winner can choose any effect lower than the one he got, if that's what he wants. So is it just a matter of introducing a sub-mechanic in the form of those circumstantial mods that I mentioned before -- maybe expanding the chart a bit to make other things it in, too?

Pfffffffffffwwwwwwww. Man...how do you designy guys do this?!

Meanwhile, I have a little bit more of an anchor on my cyberpunk thing as a setting, and I owe it all to Walter Hill. Look:



See, Streets Of Fire doesn't take place in "The Real World" -- it's a rock-and-roll fable, set in another place, another time. To me, cyberpunk is the same: Where people say it's dated, I say it's its own thing. I say it's like rockets & rayguns -- a flavor.

And here's a bit of that flavor, the way it tastes on my tongue (not in visual terms but in emotional ones):

D6 Stuff: Tales Of Why-Did-It-Take-Me-So-Long

...I swear, man. When I say I'm dense...

*sigh* Okay. So. In a nutshell: I have this thing about chase rules in an RPG. I want a mechanically-sound but highly-playable set of chase rules. It's like an obsession, a niggling desire. Why? I don't know why. I can't explain it. I just DO, OKAY?!

And, oh em gee, you know what? There's a pretty darn good set of just exactly that in Alderac Entertainment's Spycraft RPG.

You know, the silver one.

Only it's a d20-based game, and I don't like d20 games really*. So I'm not likely to play it, and therefore not likely to use the chase ru--GAAAAH! WHY DON'T I JUST CONVERT THOSE RULES TO A GAME THAT I DO LIKE?!

He musta had the chili.

I mean, really, it's just a matter of

1. Cribbing the basic parameters of Spycraft's chase rules;
2. Assigning D6 difficulty numbers to the maneuvers; and
3. Going VROOM VROOM!

That's easy, right? That's not hard. That's easy! That's totally easy.

Easy like...

...pie.


So why didn't I think of it earlier?!




*With the exception of Microlite20 and its offspring -- including SpyLite. Zing! See that?

MISTER ARNESON!

That one time at GenCon Indy, when the dude in the pink tie walked up to you, shook your hand, and said,

"Thank you. For everything."

That was me.

I still mean it, sir.