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.

Gamer's Lament

...a Classic Traveller game where the PCs are a mixed group of Ex-Scouts on detached duty and their friends, tooling around in a Scout/Courier, doing odd jobs for the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service.

...S John Ross's Warp Space, run with TLG's StarSIEGE rules.

...a Knights of Torque & Recoil/The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai-inspired contemporary pulp adventure game, using D6 Adventure.

...For that matter, a series of Indiana Jones-esque 1930s archaeological pulp adventures, also using D6 or HEX (testimony of the bullwhip!).

...that cyberpunk game that I keep thinking about, which is slowly but surely solidifying in my mind.

...a C&C/D&D RC/LL/&c. mash-up Bog Standard Fantasy Role-Playing sandbox.

...Mutant Future.

...Encounter Critical, with heavy doses of Heavy Metal and cheap, sleazy 1970s SF cinema.

...Over The Edge, which I purchased in 1993 and STILL haven't run.

...that Savage Worlds Art Nouveau Spelljammer game that I started back in January, and which hasn't been run more than once.

TEN GAMES ON MY MIND! AN 11.5-HOUR WORKDAY, INCLUDING PREP- AND DRIVE TIME, FIVE DAYS A WEEK, PLUS 45.5 HOURS A WEEK SO I DON'T GO CLINICALLY INSANE! PLUS, I HAFTA STOP AND EAT FROM TIME TO TIME!

HOW, I ASK YOU? HOW CAN I MAKE IT HAPPEN?!

Indiana Jones D6 (For Andrew)

Ahoy! Zany blog reader Andrew sez to me in some comments, he sez,

As a fan of the good Dr. Jones and of West End Games, do you have any thoughts on the MasterBook Indiana Jones game? Or the D6 conversion that eventually came out for it?

Thanks for reading the blog, Andrew! And, YES! Funny you should ask, dude! I DO HAVE SOME THOUGHTS! Wanna hea- uh, read 'em?

• "Hmm. MasterBook. Not my cuppa, but OK."
• "Wait. Indy sourcebook for MasterBook instead of for D6?! That's like saying, 'Dude! I got skates and a roller rink...! I KNOW! I'LL PUT ON SOME WOODY GUTHRIE!' "
• "...that...uh...made less sense than I thought it would. Huh."
• "One time I picked up an Indy RPG book and there was a D6 conversion in it and I was, like, 'Well, duh. What took so long...?' "
• "Damn, I wish I had that sourcebook."
• "Country-fried steak!"

...from there, my thoughts stray towards iced tea and a napkin. Oh -- and GURPS Black Ops, because I want that, too.

UPDATE: The Schweig tells it straight.

Characters Implying Plot And Setting

Okay, so yesterday my daughter Lily put on a Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD, which contained the story "The Three Moosketeers". Naturally, this morning I had Musketeers on the brain; on the drive in, one of the marbles in my head started spinning and gaining momentum and then --

-- well, here.

Alenard Durand

Experienced Musketeer, fiercely loyal to King Félix, and veteran of many engagements both on the battlefield and in the barracks. He's getting on in age, but not so you'd notice. He is well aware of the threat posed by The Cardinal du Montaigne D'Or and has vowed to oppose him at every turn.

No-Nonsense Musketeer (4), Sworn Enemy of Cardinal Montaigne D'Or (3), Grizzled Old Grognard Whom The Younger Guys Look Up To (2), Would-Be Polyglot (1)

Noemie Ramage

19-year-old daughter of a former Musketeer, who taught her to defend herself -- but she learned a little too well. She's as much of a girly-girl as she is a competent swordwoman who takes no crap, so people can't make sense of her sometimes. She hangs around with Alenard because he's an old friend of her dad's.

Stone-Cold Foxy Swordswoman Who Learned Everything From Her Musketeer Dad (4), Little Girl Who Loved Horses And Grew Up To Be A Blue-Ribbon Equestrienne (3), Avid Reader Of Romance Novels (2), Finishing School Drop-Out (1)

El Canijo

An obvious Torrero (meaning he's from the faux-Spanish kingdom of Torreón). Swarthy and mysterious, he exhibits equal parts refinement and savagery. "El Canijo" is not his real name; it's a nickanme that means "the sly one". His real name is Carlos Rodrigo de Torreón y Acevedo Cañones, and he gurads that secret jealously. He's living in Navarre because why not.

Swaggering Foreign Soldier-Of-Fortune (4), Swordsman Of The Legendary Escuela Ordaziana (3), Third-In-Line For The Throne Of Torreón, In Exile (1), Sorceror Who Needs A Lot Of Practice (2)

Éric Laplume

Éric is young, brave and optimistic -- but he isn't stupid. He is charismatic and likeable, and has an easy laugh to go with his valiant demeanor. He's just been made a Musketeer, but served for a while in the regular army until Durand saw him in action and asked him to be promoted. His parents are recently deceased, and foul play may be involved. The trail couldn't possibly lead back to the Cardinal -- could it? (That's a Hook, by the way.)

Eager Young Novice Musketeer (4), Eternal Optimist Who Can Always Think Of A Plan (3), Future Captain Of The Guard Who Just Needs Some Experience (2), Dashing Ladies' Man (1)

QUESTING DICE: Find out who killed his parents (10)

Cardinal Barnard du Montaigne D'Or

A cackling, moustache-twirling, hand-rubbing villain. He uses his power and influence as Cardinal of the church in an underhanded attempt to usurp power. For all his outward piety and respectability, he is not above using murder, theft, arson or worse to get what he wants...and what he wants is the crown!

Devious, Power-Hungry Sociopath (5), Big Kahuna Of All Things Churchy In Navarre (4); Tons Of Yes-Men (2 dice turned into Yes-Men)

Le Poisson

Dark, mysterious assassin with magical powers. Always wears a cloak and mask. Works for the highest bidder, who is usually the Cardinal. Oh, and he can turn into a fish.

Sorcerous Hit-Man (4), French Ninja (3), Disciple of the Seven Keys of Kar-Mog-Null (2), Shape-Shifter (1)

Now, if you bothered to read that, you'd notice that a plot is kind of implied. Maybe even some scenes, and the seeds of a setting (late 1600s Europe minus real names plus magic, a la 7th Sea). It wouldn't be fair to foist pre-made characters on some players just to get my jollies, though...

...would it...?

My Daughter Just Played Her First D&D Game.

Oh, holy cow.

Seriously, this is a 5-year dream for me. Literally; she's 5 ½ years old, and shortly after she wa born I had a dream about playing Dungeons & Dragons with her. Today, my wife Amber and daughter Lily and I sat down to play.

And it was my daughter's idea.

Lily had been talking about wanting to play for a while, and a couple of days ago she and my wife decided that, since Mommy was off today, we'd play when we got back from the grocery store. We put the groceries away, tidied up the living room a bit, and sat down at the table to make characters.

I decided to use Microlite20, since it would be fast and easy to play. Plus, character generation is short (especially if you leave out the skills, which we did) so there's less chance of boring the kid. She rolled her own dice and wrote down her own stats.

Lily played a fairy wizard named Barbie (I klooged up a Fairy race package: -2 to STR, but base AC 15) and Amber made an elven rogue named Serena. I asked them what their characters' favorite foods were; Barbie's was chocolate, Serena's was pears. I had a reason, trust me. With stats, appearances and favorite foods decided, we started the game...

Barbie and Serena lived in the village of Blackoak, and Barbie woke up one morning very excited because today was the day the general store was expecting the chocolate wagon to roll in. She flew over to the store where Mister Hooper (why not?) told her that the wagon was late. Oh no! He asked her if she wanted to wait for the shipment.

Lily took to the idea of playing right away when Amber and I asked her, "Do you want to wait, or do something else?" In her character's voice -a falsetto if ever I've heard one- Lily had Barbie declare, "I'm going to go find out why the shipment is late!"

Excellent.

Given the choice to go on her own or take a friend, she went to Serena's house to recruit her on the adventure. I kinda hinted that she should do that, but Lily did start making her own choices: Given the choice between investigating the road coming into town or the woods, she picked the woods. "We're going to investigate deep, deep into the woods," she declared in character. I told her that she knew that the woods might be dangerous and that there might be monsters...but my child, my daughter, my five-and-a-half-year-old little darling, was not to be dissuaded. "Let's go DEEP into the woods, DEEPER than DEEP!" she said.

My child is a sandboxer.

The pair went into the woods for a while but found no chocolate wagon. I rodded a bit by asking if they wanted to go look somewhere else or keep looking in the woods, and Lily chose to keep going into the woods. She sat on Mommy's lap mimed flapping her wings to show how Barbie was flying along. Priceless!

Eventually they got lost, and the woods got darker. Right about then, they heard footsteps in the woods but couldn't see anyone. Lily decided that Barbie would cast a Light spell, which revealed a goblin in a brown-and-purple kilt eating a bar of chocolate.

Much laughter from the child.

The goblin ran off, but Serena and Barbie followed. The goblin blew his roll to NOT trip and fall (I stitched in the SIEGE Engine from Castles & Crusades) and was confronted by the two adventurers. "You stole the chocolate!" Barbie accused, but the goblin naturally denied any wrongdoing and took off again.

This time, Lily had to roll to keep an eye on him; she failed. "I guess I fall down," she said dejectedly...but she took the failure very well. I was worried about how she'd handle failure, since it's part of the game; I'm proud to say that she just kind of accepted it, especially after we explained that the roll was not to navigate but to track. Somehow, she was okay with that.

My wife, obviously the more experienced player, suggested looking for goblin tracks or chocolate bits. I declared no roll was necessary, since Barbie had cast another Light spell. Sure enough -- goblin tracks and a wadded-up chocolate wrapper led into the woods.

"I'm going to go by myself!" declared Lily-as-Barbie, and when I described that she heard voices up head, my child --

-- Okay, I swear that this happened. I'm not making this up. Proud as I am of my child, I'll be the first to admit her shortcomings. I have to; as a parent, it's important for me to know her strengths and her weaknesses so as to better raise her.

My daughter, a first-time player, faced with an open-ended tactical situation, said:

"I sneak up on them."

Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it just doesn't seem to me that a five-year-old girl who is running around with a toy wand, pretending to be a fairy, would normally have the foresight to do that. Let me have my Proud Daddy moment.

Lily got under the table to simulate hiding in the branches, and I described the earlier goblin, a chubby one in a yellow camo-pattern kilt and a strong one with a sword in a black kilt discussing the fact that the fairy and the elf were in the woods. "If they find out we stole the chocolate," said the chubby one, "we'll be in big trouble!"

"They WON'T find out," snarled the strong one, waving his sword.

At this point I asked Lily, "What do you do?" She replied by miming spell-casting with her wand.

YES!

I explained that she had a spell tat would put the goblins to sleep, and one that would shoot a magic bolt. "Sleep!" she declared, and I described sparkles and stars and moons raining down from her wand.

"Okay," I said, "Let's roll to see if they fall asleep."

"Do we have to...?" Lily asked.

"Hey," my wife said, "I think our kid's a diceless player!"

"You don't have to," I explained. "I do." The chubby one and the strong one blew their saves; the original one was okay. Serena showed up and threw a rock at him for 2 hit points. Then, I announced the need for initiative rolls.

The goblin charged Serena for 4 hp, bare-handed; then it became Barbie's turn. Here, Lily -who was running around the living room waiving her wand- described the appearance of her Magic Missile -- "A bunch of candy flies out! EXPLODING candy! It flies out, and gathers up into instruments -- even CANDY DRUMSTICKS. And when he plays the drum, IT EXPLOOOOOODES!!!!"

Well, in no time, the goblin was set on fire and disposed of, while the sleeping ones were tied up. Upon waking up, the strong one said, "Let me go!" Lily pointed at him and said, "I took your sword!"

Then, she turned to my wife and said, "Mommy, can we play another D&D game?"

So. Proud.

But it gets better.

It gets better because after I declared that they found the chocolate wagon and dragged it back to town (I didn't complicate things; why bother?), Mister Hooper rewarded the characters with a pretty ring for Serena and a potion of invisibility for Barbie.

Here's where it gets best of all: Lily said, in a soft voice: "I have something for you, too, Mister Hooper."

She walked over to her seat at the table, picked up a notebook, and carried it back toward me in upheld palms.

In a tender voice, my child handed me/Mr Hooper the book and said, "For you. If you ever need us again, just look up our number."











The three of us are playing again on Tuesday. "But next time," Lily says, "I'm going to be a warrior."

What It Sounds Like Inside My Head, Con't.

If it doesn't sound like this...



...then it probably sounds like this.

You Like It When I Do This, Right?

Seems like when I've posted transcripts of my stupid game notes, you gentle readers either enjoy it or at least don't try to burn my house down over it.

Well, I was just cleaning out my desk drawer at work ('cause I changed desks, not jobs) and I found some sheets of paper with stupid game notes on 'em. So I figure -- eh, why not post 'em on my blog?

After all, you don't know where I live.

COWBOYS VS. ALIENS!!!

1. What type aliens?

• Grey
• Bug-eyed monster √√
• Giger
• Gooey/Blobs
• Martians (H.G. Wells') √
  
• Predator
• Big-Headed, Wise, Benevolent
• Nords/Movellans

2. What do they want?

• Gold!
• Women!
• Cattle!
• Blood!
• Souls!
• Plutonium!
• Slaves!
• Candy!
• Booze!

3. What are the BEM's vulnerabilities?

• Water
• Cactus juice
• Whiskey
• Castor Oil
• Horse poop
• Hay
• Iron
• Milk
• NOTHING! You just need bigger guns! (Civil War cannon? Gatling gun? Dynamite?)

HASSLE IN XMASTOWN -- TROIKAS! (And stuff)

3 NPCs

1. Randolph The Robot Reindeer: A mechanical reindeer who can shoot lasers from his bright red nose. Laser-Firing Mecha-Reindeer (5)
2. El Keeblero: Zorro, if he were and Elf.
3. Esther Bunny: A panicky female rabbit in a flowered dress and a big, goofy hat. She keeps dying and coming back.

3 LOCATIONS

1. The Island of Misfit Boys: Elf gay bar.
2. Warehouse Alpha-9: An off-season storage facility. In-season, it's busy for a long time -- until around 12/23, when it's totally empty with the exception of a guy sweeping up.
3. The Golden Nugget: A hotel/casino owned & operated by Yukon Cornelius. Rumors of a backstage operation dealing in sketchy hi-tech R&D have yet to be proven.

XMASTOWN -- SOME LOCATION NOTES + Q&A

-Who's there that the PCs would want to punch in the face?

A: Scorizo, the Grumpy Elf: A crooked, deceitful elf who fancies himself a mastermind. He wants the North Pole and Christmas all to himself, and getting it means taking Santa Claus out of the picture. Since he's a schemer, though, he doesn't want to get his hands dirty.

Scorizo (like "chorizo"*) is a two-faced bastard through and through. He's really nice to your face, but he hates you behind your back.

Elf with Connections (4), Total Smarmy Bastard (3), Liar (3)


*Contrary to what Food Network hosts say, it's pronounced chore-EE-so, not chore-EATS-so. Don't say it that way, it makes you sound pretentious and stupid.

A Cool Movie Swordfight You Probably Haven't Seen

That's probably, mind you, because I don't know that Blake Edwards' 1965 slapstick adventure/comedy The Great Race is popular among my peers (that's you who are reading this; don't try to dodge it, it'd stick in court).

But maybe it should be well-known amongst gamers, because even though it's not a straight-up genre pic, it has plenty to offer. Take, for instance, this here sword fight between Tony Curtis and Ross Martin (skip forward to 0:49 to get to the stuffs). I dunno fencing from whitewashing (besides the obvious) so who knows if these guys are any good or not, but it's a fun sword fight anyway.

Later, there's a pie fight -- the biggest in cinema history. Plus, the film features plenty of adventure tropes, a parody of The Prisoner of Zenda, a wacky car, some stunts, an exploding town, Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk as villains, a flash of Natalie Wood's leg and Larry Storch as a heavy.

If the words "Larry Storch as a heavy" didn't set somethin' off, then...aaahhh...go ask your parents.

Speaking of which, this movie is great for kids, and I intend on watching it with mine, tomorrow.

Holy Writ II: The Parable of the Stupid Hat

So it came to pass that Dr Rotwang! was seen one day to be wearing a stupid hat.

Upon seeing him, did a bespectacled skinny dude say, "Hey! What's with that stupid hat? That hat is wrong! Why do you wear it?"

Then did Rotwang! take a sip of his A&W Cream Soda and he replied unto him thusly:

"Wearing this hat gives me a kind of joy that I can hardly articulate, let alone express in a brief, succinct blog post that won't bore those who read it. I can't change what you think of my hat; I can change the hat itself, but I won't."

The skinny dude pondered this and said, "Well, your tie is stupid, too."

Whereupon Rotwang! smote him with a shovel dipped in tar and set aflame, all the while saying, "Now, you're just being a dick."

No one was really enlightened, but that shovel burned pretty well.

-- The Horsepuckey Chronicles of Rotwang!, Book I Part 6, p. 30, just an inch or two over from the Tabasco sauce stain from that night at Kyle's house