Ah, superhumans....

Yep. Ye Olde Topic. I got to thinking today while wandering downtown about things that bug me, things I wished were different. For example: superheroes are a bad thing. Most super games make them intrinsically part of the setting - the whole capes, flying people all accepted by the public as normal, and the underwear on the outside of pants issue. The heroes call themselves heroes; the villains do the same (the latter has always baffled me).
So a more serious take would be needed. No tights, no fancy capes (unless you like choking to death in revolving doors), no awed crowds. Just people being people. Hubris tried that, but when the team/hero route too fast, and then kind of imploded in a nicely comics fashion. Aftermath was for a more superhero take on the same setting, and was fun.
What seperates superheroes from other genres and people with powers is the superman idea. The kind of hero who does the good thing because it's the right thing to do. They're needed in a world that needs heroes, that needs people to do what must be done. I think it's necessary, if only to avoid munchkins.
So, a game idea... I was thinking of a world where everyone has/gains superpowers (the notes for it are somewhere on my computer, including pc creation). Instead, do people from another world sent en masse to earth, and try to survive....

I think it could be fun to try, at least. Superhumans, yes. But not heroes, or villains. Just aliens, trying to survive ina foreign world and given the choice of hero or monster....

Paranoia April 26th

what the topic says :)

I hope to run a quick 2-4 hour session starting at 10pm EST (Can start eariler if people want). If you'd like to play, yet me know.
If you know nothing about paranoia, see this page for information. We'll be using 2nd edition rules. Sparkie can make apc if you type !paranoia and a sheet can be found here. If you need help making a PC, talk to Alcar.

Remember: Failure to join this game is treason!

D&D (3e) game May 2nd

Yes, Alcar shall run a D&D session. The Squirrel Game. It's nicely infamous. Ask Sintaqx if you want details. It was the first game I ran online, on may 1st 1999. So in honour of Game1 turning 6, I shall run it again.

hmmm... I wonder if the squirrels know that The first step in making friends is* not to eat people* .

PCs must be level 1, standard races and classes unless the player asks for something else nicely.
Plot wise, you're all on your way to meet a caravan at a village through the woods. Nice and simple.

Quote: * Alaya wonders if a carniverous flying squirrel would make a good familiar

Game: The Squirrel Game
Time: Sunday May 1st, 10pm EST
PC level: 1 (D&D 3e. None of that 3.5 crap)
DM: Alcar
Dicebot: Sparkie
Players: The more the merrier.

UA

Hrm, last post died. Okay, then..... pre sessions so didn't work out for later this week. RL sucks. That aside, I *may* be willing to do one or two prior to the game Monday (1-2 hrs long). The game begins at 10pm EST on Monday. If you want a rules overview, how and when to roll dice, how madness works etc. show up an hour early.

Players include: Baliadoc (I think?), Caltak, FirestormZero, Gemm, JacobRiis & WarezBert. No other players will be added. If some of this list cannnot make it, I may be willing to add another player or two in. (Ideally, I'd like 4-5 players showing up each session.)

Remember: It's not the things we don't know that we should fear, but the things we know. The known threat is far more dangerous than the unknown one.

Pre-Session Times

For those who have NOT had pre-sessions for UA, book times.

I can do 1 to 6 pm EST Friday if all goes well, and the same Saturday. I should be able to do all day Sunday unless RL stuff comes up. Monday, of course, will be the first session.

It's going to involve a party at Dawsons house on the 29th of April (Game time), a friday night. All PCs should be there, for some reason or another. (It's got a really good library for the shy and sociallly challlenged PCs (and NPCs)), a pool, free food and drinks and a first-time opening of the Estate to outsiders.

UA Presessions

As UA shall begin April 19th, pre-sessions before then are possible. Book a date and time with the GM (That'd be me :p) and we'll work for sometHing out. Shall only do 1 player at a time, for maximum results from said session.
If you have an idea for a specific event or meeting with an NPC or something you'd like it to cover, feel free to suggest it.

Sara!

has her own sheet! Isn't that neat! Oh, look, Mac! I made a rhyme! If I did it all the time could we have sex?!

Note For UA Players

Faces in the Dark is going to be an Unknown Armies campaign, which you already know. (Or at least I most sincerely hope you do and haven't been trying to figure out if Body 50 is figured out by adding your Str and Con together, but I digress.) As such, it's a horror game. It's a world where all your certainties and acceptied ideas of how the world works are, at best, lies. Religion, science, new age, old age: it doesn't matter.

As a horror game, it's about what happens when you realize "this is my fault. I ended up here because of what I did.". It's also going to contain dark themes, often adult ones. If you nwant to bow out after a few sessions, do so. Far better than playing a game you feel uncomfortable playing.
This isn't to say there won't be humour (I doubt I could run a game without humour), just that the moments of laughter will most likely be relief and release from the wider world the PCs slolwly begin to learn about, the one tha invariably drives people more than a little mad.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that we're here to tell a story. Dice will be used for effect, or whe the outcome of a situation is in doubt, but rarely besides then. The story is also a group effort, and about the group. Which means that the PCs shall work together. How? Why? It's up to you to figure out how your PC gets into plots, or subplots, or what have you.

And above all else, we're here to have fun. With luck, the town shall even survive it :)

UA Ready....

well, at least I think so. Got umpteen NPCs done, at least.

Will be altering the map a bit, labelling police, fire etc. on it. And adding PC homes, if players want.

Just need to write some canned text for places and a few more plots down on paper...

So those that need to finish or make PCs (you know what - err, who - you are, try and get them in next week)

New LOLAD Story

Wrote a new one. Well, more accurately, finished the 1st one I began. It involves rabbits, central park, vampires, and humans. More or less.

Let me know if you'd like to be emailed a copy.

UA Players

Currently, we have FSZ ansd Caltak with finished PCs.
Keith and Baliadoc with ideas, unfinished PCs.
And Gemm interested in joining.

There's opening for 1 more player, max.

And the site is up at #game1.

UA Snippet

Just one of those weird ideas... and, hey, you might meet this person :)

Lines (Mar 2004)

There's always a point where I go too far. I can feel it coming, when my fist impacts your face like putty, when the dog stops whining, when the other people stares at me in shock, trying to disbelieve what I've done. I can feel the lines. Right and wrong, good and evil, smart and stupid, pleasure and pain - all of them, and more besides. Some things don't even seem to have lines, but there are boundaries even there. Sanity and insanity, reason and unreason, love and hate.
It started when I pissed in the pool, when I was six. We'd been told not to, but I did it anyway. Everyone saw. Everyone left the pool, and my mother screamed at me. Perhaps it was then. Or when I was twelve, and masturbated in front of the class for show and tell. Or when I was ten, and ate a handful of live bugs just to prove I could. I was fourteen when I first cut myself. A knife, red hot. My own personal tattoo, on my arm.
Mom made me wear long sleeves. She took me to a shrink.
All I learned from her was that it's the people who think they're in charge who are more messed up than anyone else. They've seen real power, some of them. And they turn their backs on it. She told me she'd done crazy things when she was young, to get attention. But it's not about attention. It's about Power.
Real power lies in going too far, in going where other people won't, saying what they won't say, doing what they're too afraid to do. She'd had sex with her father, and her brother, and let her mother know. She'd had power, and she ran away from it.
It's what the shrinks do. Them, and cops, and anyone else. Authority exists to take away power by giving them power. Only those who want to abuse it last in it, because it feeds them. So they make laws, and lines, and signs. And those with real power cross them.
Sometimes it's a step. Sometimes it's more. Sometimes you get gunned down by fully automatic weapons in front of kids at a playground. Sometimes you start screaming one day and never quite stop. It's about pushing things, and seeing if they push back. Bending them. Breaking them. Watching things just give way under your word or action.
I'm not sure where it will end. I could cut my fingers off, or my ears. Or cut into my face and let everyone see what we all look like inside. Get a sex-change operation, and then a change back. I don't know. I don't know how far I can push the boundary before it tears. The light the religious freaks speak of when they die; that's one. But I want to do it and live to shove that into the faces of all the cowards who hide behind laws, and order, and normal.
I want them to see the prisons they've built for themselves, and hear the sound as the walls come tumbling down.
I want to go beyond all boundaries, to the places where power has no meaning, and be free.
I want to go beyond my freedom.
I want to go too far, and never stop.
And I want you to come with me, to see what I can show you. It's not hard. We can screw in public, to start. A threesome, if we can get one. Anymore and we'd be called a cult, or something. No. We just need to journey, and let everyone else be voyeurs.
Trust me. It's like sex, but it goes on forever.
Let me take you to real power, beyond the boundaries.
All we need is laughter, and love, and time, and perversity.
Come with me and go too far.
Do it. I dare you. Step over a line, and live.

UA Update

The game is being set in the small town of Millhaven, Neb.

The PCs are students at Centennial High, the local High School.
Currently we have Keith (PC unnamed) the groundskeeper/janitor
Caltak, playing Hugh the antisocial goth
Bali, who may be playing a military brat
An NPC named Alexander, just a normal kid.

UA CAMPAIGN

Time: Mondays, 10pm EST (1st and 3rd of each month). I'd like to do a planning session this monday (the 22nd) at 8pm EST. It'll go until 10, when Aftermath'll run. If you can't make it but would like to play get ahold of me with character ideas etc. Sunday. Thanks.

This is going to be a new campaign. Characters from previous ones CAN be used (and are more than welcome :)). What I need from all of you is:
1) Who wants to play? Why?
2) What KIND of game do you want? Lots of horror? Lots of tragedy? Lots of magick?
3) What kind of setting you want.. large city? Small town? Trailer park in the far end of nowhere?
4) General Brainstorming.

Why am I here? says the PC....

Just some thoughts on why characters get involved in games, and with other PCs, especially in existing campaigns. I for one tend to suck at introducing new PCs into games, and (hopefully) will remedy this somewhat in lolad and amber. Then I got to thinking about the entire player/GM relationship ....

The GM can put out the Plot Hook, and the PC not follow. Hell, it happens. A lot of the time. Or sometimes they see the Plot, and don't go for it, for whatever reason. What then? Well, says I, screw them. No, seriously. (But not literally.) Kill the PC off, or something. Tell the player to make a new one. Of course, this isn't always sensible or viable, but sometimes it has to be done.

The Plot is there for a reason, generally. Playing in RPGs is not like the movies, where you go to watch the scenes, and eat popcorn. Players need to WORK to get themselves into the plot, and stay with the others. The GM should guide them along, give them hints and ideas, but is not obliged to force feed them to the party. If the PC can't/doesn't work with the others, the PC won't be in the game. At least, that's my way of looking at things.

There are exceptions of course (see Vora :p) but in general GMs have enough to do without having to fit people into the plot like jigsaw puzzles. Want your PC to be a main character and do kewl stuff? Then get into the game and interact. It's not a movie, it's a joint effort and you'll only get out of it what you put into it.....