Playing in Someones Backyard...

Or, RPGs in set worlds
(aka I should be writing novel stuff or amber stuff but I'm not)

Games set in other universes can be fun. Star Wars springs to mind, as does, oh, Marvel or DC comics. The advantages are obvious in saving a GM time (If she knows the setting well enough, if not players can be a pain). The big problem, to me, is canon.
If you set SW in the time of the 4-6 movies (or after, with those heroes running around) and don't play them, you can run into problems. Yeah, sure you can do famous stuff, but they are the big heroes, the gods among men. And if you can't play characters who can equal (or beat) them, then I'd say it's not the Star Wars larger-than-life space opera deal. Comic book universes run into the same problems. What can you do that Superman can't? How can you be a real hero when the Justic League is around and everyone looks up to them?
And, perhaps more importantly, what if they don't react in the right manner to establidshed character? What if they question Leias devotion to the rebellion, or tell Batman to go take a hike because he's just human and, hello, you have superspeed and can kill him before he can react.

One solution is ixnaying the canon setting. To some extent, this will happen. Either during the game or in planning most GMs will diverge from the established setting with some ideas or rules. [The (current(?) (heh)) UA campaign did that to an extent.] I think this works best if the players are allowed to as well, inputing ideas for changes and the like, as long as when all of you look up after the planning is done you're no longer In the Star Trek universe, or whatever. Which might not be bad, but likely what wasn't intended.

Another is to let the players become great heroes, as big as the existning canon ones. The easiest method (short of wiping out the canon big names) is to set the game in an area that doesn't involve them. Earth4, for DC, or a distant part of the federation where no one has ever or will ever or knows anyone who has served on the Enterprise. The players need to be heroes in their own game, not second stringers to the established Canon figures.

The last option I can think of is to throw a massive continuity twist as players. For example, my Amber game is one where Brand *won* the Patternfall War. Other examples....
1) Sauron won the War of the Rings. The PCs are living in the eastlands, protected by the Brown Wizard who didn't want to be involved in the War and is now screwed and angry.
2) Luke turned to the Dark Side, Dad and Son rule the Empire.
3) Big Evil Virus wipes out most mutants. The Big Names are either dead or fled the world or in hiding from the creator of it - humans who know that humanity is going to be extinct soon or something).
4) Do-gooders in Star Trek who think the Prime Directive is immoral and try and help primitives.
5) The Rebellion becomes just as bad as the Empire (it often happens in RL, after alll...)) and the PCs must take down the Canon characters.
6) The communist Federation is under attack from the inside by democracy.
7) Darth Binks. (Okay, that one IS a joke).
8) Go back in history. Set the Canon universe in the Wild West ("Well, Sherrif Kent, you might be a big name in these parts but.."). Or the far future ("The MegaComputer is operational again, and encoded into your brain. We must protect you before the AI of Sauron looks towards you and sends the 9 Nazgul Virii.")

Hmm, about all I can come up with off hand.
Any other thoughts?

Star Generator?

Hey all. Looking for some kind of generator for, oh, a galaxy or something. Nothing too fancy, just a way to place different empires within a galaxy at different places to give players an idea of what is where.

Luck

Luck, Nightfall thought, is a matter of opinion.
- Mickey Reichert, "The Legend of Nightfall"

Just been thinking about luck in RPGs. In most games, luck is seen as a bad thing (or at the very least a humorous one). Take D&D for example, where 3 goblins can defeat a level 5 dwarf. In most cases, use of luck in an rpg boils down to metagaming to reduce the problems it can cause. "I have +X, he likely has less, so attacking him is a good option..." and the like.

Diceless games don't have this problem. The problem they get is that killing off characters can no longer be blamed on chance. The blame - such as it is - falls solely on the GM or the player. Likely a combination of both, depending upon the situation, since the GM is the one who sets up most situations. Most diceless games tend to have some luck variable built into the system to deal with those problems, or (like Tyranny) have mandatory weaknesses built into characters.

Advantages of dice:	Random elements are fun. People like chance, even if it works against them. You can end up with a lot of unintentional humour.
Disadvantages of dice:	Strong tendency towards metagaming. Bad luck can kill even the best pcs. Distracts from telling the story.
Advantages of diceless:	You can reasonably expect to make the kind of character you want to. More emphasis on role playing.
Disadvantages of diceless:	Lack of excuse for GMs and players when characters die. Death becomes far more aribitary. Loss of the chance mechanic.

Any other thoughts?

Game Times

Ios will be ON for the 3rd as far as I know...

Aftermath *may* be off - I have to be at my parents that day waiting for the cable guy for them, so depending on when he comes I may not be able to make it back to run the session on the 5th.
And, sadly, the Aftermath session on the 12th won't be on due to RL poetry meeting.

All for now. Hopefully all...

GAME ANNOUCEMENT (D&D)

"Project Salvation"
2 open slots. Level 18 game, characters are DM-made (non-negotiable). Meets saturdays, 11pm EST, average game is 3 hours, max game is 5 hours. System is 3.5e, but 3.0e knowledge will suffice. Experienced players only, DM will NOT hold your hand when making rolls.

Talk to PlayerZero for more information.

Amber Game PC, like, Needed.

Ok, so the amber game is being plotted and stuff, and there are four players interested as present, right? Right.
But one more would be good. For best effect, there would be fourteen brothers, six dead and 8 sisters with 2 dead, possibly 4, but alas that won't work as well, and 9 pcs would be a tad much.
The game will run at "whenever the five of us are on" as a time. As most (if not all) of the players are in PST and MST those timezones would be best for anyone wanting to join unless they like staying up obscenely late

... says the person who once played an amber game that began at 4 am....

(Oh, and there will be pre-sessions for the game, to allow players to get a feel for their characters. BUT the first session (or 2nd) will be everyone getting together, crew-like. In Amber. Or maybe it's just the Paranoia idea of gathering them together and seeing how many survive... Paranoia Amber... *ponders*)

I got me a craving.

Besides UA, which I am still craving a lot, I've also lately been wanting to play in a game where the PCs are the crew of some kind of ship. I don't care if that means a sailing ship or a space ship; I don't care if we're traders, transporters, pirates, or explorers. Hell, it doesn't even need to be a "ship," per se... We could all be part of a caravan traveling the post-apocalyptic wasteland, if that's what other people really want. I just crave something crew-like. Dunno why... maybe because we've had s many games where the PCs are so separated and individualistic, that the reverse would be nice.

So, anyone want to run something like that for me? :D

aslhk's currently untitled amber game

aslhk will be running an amber game after |337c4bb4g3's ends. Yes, I plan to steal that prime sunday time slot unless real life intrudes. For those who don't know what amber is, perhaps you should play and find out. For those of you who DO know, and hate it, I hate YOU!

There is no definite concept yet! If you've got any ideas for an amber game, let me know. If there is significant interest in continuing the old campaign, we may pick that up. I think everyone would have new pcs for this game--and there will be a different focus, but I would be willing to give the old pcs some time in the spotlight--player controlled, of course.

For those who didn't play in my old game, don't worry about it! I am definitely open to new players. Okay, that is enough for now. I will update with a link to the website, later, when I have one. :)

MERRY XMAS

And a happy new year. Etc.

Here's hoping next year is as fun as this one (or better, if you like).

Supers Game Idea

For anyone interested (and everyone else, too) the game idea in question was actually a solution to some of the problems in Aftermath that didn't seem likely, but did seem like it could be interesting as its own setting. The basic idea was: what if everyone on an entire planet became superhuman? What kind of police would be needed to enforce laws? I found out after, via a mailing list, that the ubiquitous Alan Moore had already covered the same ground with Top 10 (and just read the first collection of stories, which were nicely amusing).
I think I'll likely wait a bit after Aftermath before doing anything with the idea, though. I do have rough notes for a weird character generation system for it and stuff about Manchester England, where I was considering setting it. We'll see how everything goes.

Game Time Note

Ios will be OFF on the 27th since I am helping my parents move. Aftermath MAY be off due to the same, but I'm not sure.
Oh, and my plan to wrap up one of 'em by the end of the year has obviously failed :)

Note:

Next game scheduled will be UA/Paranoia alternating weekly.
I may end up running a casual-time Amber game as well, as the plotting is going well currently :)
After those there is a superhero game running through my head that may (or may not) get run. I like the idea, but may run it only as a more episodic idea than a real campaign. Would allow for more structured stories, for one thing.

And then, once I get right down to making it, there is Urdu as well in the background. The gods only know what I'd run or make after that, but I think Urdu may be the last.

(And by last I mean last setting I plan to create. I want to move on to other stuff, like more novel ideas and world creation for games - while great fun - takes up a lot of time. And if the development of Urdu goes as planned it is going to suck up a LOT of time. Which will be good in that I may actually finally make a world that feels full/real to me. Lands of Blood came close in a lot of ways, but not quite as close.)

It rained after the storm, but it was no rain that had ever been felt before. The rain cut through the sky and left it rent and bleeding strange colours few had seen before and none ever did again. Strange creatures and people came out the air and landmasses crashed together than had never been in the same world. Suns lit skies and died in moments as worlds and realities collided and shattered into fragments. Entitre civilisations fell within moments as the storm rushed past and over them, and there was a screaming in it that none had ever heard and no one could ever forget. Entire universes blinked out of existence, unravelling into chaos for the storm was so very bright and the shadows never deep enough.
In the end it was over, though few who remained knew what had happened, nor how. So,mething had passed over al the worlds that were and nothing could ever be the same. Something had died, that mucht the learned could agree on, and some called it God. The wise had different tales, of the City that was all cities, of the land that all others were pale reflections of, a reality that had intruded itself into the worlds for one brief terrible moment and was gone.
Some called it Heaven.
Others called it Amber.
But it was gone, the golden city that had had been home to gods, and more than gods. many dreamt of it, of golden spires, verdant forests and lofty peaks and, perhaps, of a horned creature that wept somewhere - alone, and lost.
After the storm survivors huddled in ruined cities, or walked broken roads ot lands that had escaped and made their homes, carrying with them tales of dread and a black road that led to the very beginning of things and birthed monsters. But it, too, had been broken by the storm that swept reality and terrified nations posted guards and planets were destroyed by vast weapons to break the parts that reamined., and they waited.
"There was a war in heaven," the religions claimed, but if there was a victor no one knew. Heaven was empty, and silent, save for the ech of the storm, and sometimes the storm itself crashing into universes years after for the first time and scattering those who had doubted and those who had sought sanctuary like flotsam. There has been no calm ever after, no understanding of the force that shredded wallsbetween universes like tissue paper, just stories, and legends.
And time passed, as time does, and stories became wilder, and the few grains of true were cast ot the winds and lost.
All save for the name Amber,
and it was no more.

Long Rant on Playability

Here's a problem I've been having with RPGs in general, one that has started to bug me about modern ones in particular. I like modern rpgs. In general, there is less problem with descriptions, background and the like than in other genres (though if you want to get a city right, it can be far more research intensive). The problem is the whole issue of playability. In fantasy settings this is rarely as large an issue - everything is archetypal, and most people know the basic conventions of the genre.
In modern games, this isn't as much the case. You want to play a police office, for example. How much do you really know about the law of the campaign area? Or how laws get enforced in that country? Is having watched Cops and Law & Order a lot enough to make up for this? What about a 3000 year old Vampire who, since she's now a PC, is going to do stupid things like risk death? Or the high-paid corporate assassin?
To a certain extent we can cover this with some fiction novels but what about more mundane things, like a economics professor at the local university? At some point, what is allowable in a system collides with what is actually playable by the player. And in that sense the university geology professor is as much a strain on playability as the werewolf living out his life as a animal tamer for the local zoo.
The other problem this raises is credibility of the setting. Characters who do things that it seems blatantly obvious that they wouldn't (like a military covert ops agent deciding to put the corpses of his friends in the back of a car while driving away from a cemetery*) strain the believability in their role and make the setting a bit less real. Every bit helps.
So should people only play what they know? Of course not. That would be boring, for one thing. But should they play something they have no idea about? I've done it, and I'd say no.
Any other thoughts?

* Though games that deal in weird horror (like UA) can allow for this since characters may well cling to normal rituals at the sight of Things Men Was Not Meant To See(tm) or be under the control of Something Other(patent pending), but even so one can only go so far before you hit absurdity and screwball comedy...

And we're back...

and can play DVDs again, and have lots and lots of free memory. Yay! Must fill it with cheerleader ninjas soon.

*wanders away muttering something about stupid cds unable to find card files*

Ios Idea

Any thoughts on the idea of changing Ios from D&D to UA game system wise?

Good idea? Bad idea? Alcar is nucking futs? Comment/post here on it.