4 Waus Update

We now have 7 players! So the game is full, unless Baliadoc wants to join, but he'll never show anyway (*evil grin*). Jokes aside, the game is full. I'm expecting some player drop outs as it goes on, due to RL and the like, so the high number of starting PCs isn't a problem. Or hopefully won't be :) If it is, I'll roll dice and kill pcs .. oh, wait, amber is diceless. Okay, there'll , err, be an accident. Yeah. That's it......

The forum is going to be the source of info for the game. (I can make a basic site with PC summaries, pics and the like if people want.) Here's hoping for lots of fun.

4 ways begins....

So, next game becomes a real game due to inertia. heh. Ah well. Shall be fun :)

Game time is Sunday nights. Depends on the players as to when it starts. I'm open for whenever, but 5 pm est earliest, by preference. (I like to sleep in Sundays :).

Current players:
Tass, playing Johnny
Chaos, playing Linda
Warezbert, playing Victor
Caltak, playing Aubrey III

Room for, say, 2-3 more players, depending on how often it runs and who makes the game regularly and the like. Between sessions a la Aftermath are quite possible, but as I work most nights aren't too likely unless people want to be up late. (As in, starting a game as 2 am EST.)

All PCs are students in high school who have answered a federally funded initiative to teach superhumans how to defend themselves and use their powers. They want to be superheroes. With help, and a lot of luck, they might even make it :)

Pcs should be posted to the 4 ways forum (see sidebar, or game1 topic), though if you want Secret Dark Stuff give me that seperately.
Note that, unless stated otherwise, all Forum stuff is OOC knowledge, in terms of stats and histories for NPCs and PCs.

If you want more points, post things to the board! Follow Chaos's example. Make a character diary, add a pic (hero machine is very good for that) and the like. The more stuff, the merrier. Do session summaries, from your PCs pov. Or whatever. Have fun.

4 ways forum made!

See it here!.

Join! Post! And Stuff!

"4 Ways," a superhero game...

Okay, going to do it as 4-colour superhero world, in a modern setting.

Meaning?

Well, the premise of 4 colour comics is that good is good and bad is bad. Very little ambiguity (that'll change, natch) and very little killing. I'll bend the latter, a little, but all pcs are superheroes, and the good guys and as such they never kill.

Now, as far as comic book universres go, I'll allow ANYTHING, with a few minor caveats:

- Magic is NPC only, and not common. This applies to supernatural creatures as well.
- Superscience doesn't exist. What gadgetry etc. does exist works only for the maker and no one else, and not always well.
- Not everyone with powers becomes a super hero (or villain). This is more reality based than four colour, but I want to keep the game within reality as much as possible that way.

More will be added. Need to dash to work.

Next Game Idea, Part The Second

Okay, some clarifications are probably in order....

Idea #1 (Aliens From Outer Space)
This idea is more along the lines of Superman than any other, in my head at least. Aliens crahs land to earth as losers in a war, or fleeing some catastrophic war/event of some kind, and end up in a location, and have to adapt to the new world. Very shortly, they realize that they can do things the humans can't, and must decide what to do with them ... especially since the Evil Aliens were planning to conquer this world as well (or some other plot like that).
The idea is primarily about being heroes for the reason of it being the right thing, not for reward, or fame, or glory. It's saving people because they need/deserve/should be, and you can. Its about being a monster trying to be a man, and the how and why of sacrifice.

Idea #2 (4-colour Superheroics)
Basically super hero world with all the stops pulled out. Every kind of superhero origin could be done, anything can happen and realism is pretty much shot straight to hell in favour of sheer wackiness and trying to balance private and public personas along with dealing with fun questions of the legitimacy of super law enforcers and the like.
How long superpowers have existed would have to be worked out (I'm partial to "starting" them in about 1980 just to avoid the overused world wards and Hiroshima stuff, tho using Roswell can work (i.e. the government breeds superhumans to combat an alien threat initially.))
I.e. what I'd intended Aftermath to sort of become (or at least be a prelcude to). As some players have noted, I tend to have trouble with 4-colour comics worlds. I keep wondering things, like WHY the masks, why the need/desire to hide ... and questions of conscience. Like, if you were Superman, could you *afford* to have a day job and normal life when that takes away from savings others? Still could be done, and be fun, if worked out right.

Idea #3 (Super spies)
The cold war. You have powers mortal men cannot even dream of, but must keep them a secret lest the evil capitalists (or communists) discover them, and are sent over the Iron Curtain to wreak havoc on the enemies of your nation ... not a superhero game in the normal 4-colour sense, but more about following orders, the prices of power and questions of loyalty. Will PCs be content to be hidden from the world, or try and forge a brighter future?

As you may have guessed, I'm most partial to idea #3 (tho I have no idea WHY :p). The ranking of the games is mostly in "how hard it would be to make." #3 is hardest solely from a research perspective, for players and the GM. #2 is hard simply in the amount of time it would take to make a real, viable superhero universe.

Next Game Idea

So much for my idea of just revisiting old settings and not making new ones.....

Be thbat as it may, for some reaosn my brain has a hankering for another superhero rpg. Dunno why. Probably because I like the genre.

System: Amber, modified a bit. So, yeah, diceless. The way a superhero rpg should be, imho.

Actual Game: Depends. I have a few ideas kicking around in my head.

1) Aliens. Yep, a group of aliens of different species on a colony ship that gets attacked by Big Evil Guys and crashes. PCs then hav eto find out what world they're on, learn the language, survive, and deal with more ET jokes than should be possible.

2) A 4-colour world. Lots and lots of superhumans, from way back when to present. Take everything from gorillas to aliens to lava men and go hog-wild with comics physics and mentality.

3) Cold War spies. Created by some Secret Means, and sent to stop the Communists (Or Capitalists, if we make 'em Russian). More super-spies than heroes.

4) Odd Ones Out. Same world as #2, more or less, but the PCs are the dorks, the ones with the mostly useless powers or horribly unlucky and the like. Very Mystery Men, really. Could be done. Could be fun. Probably best as a short game though.

Variants on the above are possible. I'm more partial to #1 and #3 just because making an entire superhero universe and world is very, very time consuming.

Any other ideas/thoughts'd be appreciated.

Religion in RPGs

This is just a quick post, as the subject came to mind while working out things for Carolis.

Carolis was conceived as a world without gods and clerics since, well, it makes the setting more dangerous. And because I had used gods in most every other setting and wanted to try somethng new. That doesn't mean there aren't religions (the druids have a pretty involved one, tho it's private), just that there are not, strictly speaking, any gods (druids, somewhat accepted). Most religions tend to be the mystery cult variety, and have little to not political impact in the "real" world on a large scale.
On a private scale, they're rather powerful, much like the masons. You give favours to friends in the same religion, etc. One reason for this is the same reason there are no guilds: the power of religioins is their appeal to ideals and emotions, and makes them hard to control for the political powers (the guilds are more because they could be an economic throeat).

But as for RPGs in general, I'm not sure how well gods work, especially if gods aren't met on a daily basis and the like. I mean, religion was a BIG part of people's lives in the middle ages, and in most games set in the same millieu it would stand to reason that it's as big. But it seldom is. Some of this is because most GMs don't really make a viable, "real" religions, others is because players tend to operate on the modern assumption that "It's all fake, and exists for the power of those on the top". Which may or may not be true. In any event, getting pcs to really *believe* seems difficult because of this, especially if the gods are never actually present.

Any other thoughts or ideas on the subject?

KIAEB Time

Kiaeb is going to run at 11am - 2pm PST (2pm - 5 pm EST) Wed, Thurs, and Friday. At least, this is the goal :)

Game beguns tomorrow (July 28th). Due to a dentist appointment for moi, it won't run Thurday (auspicious beginning, eh) but will run Friday, and run next week as scheduled, I think. Depends on if I end up helping someone move or not. If I can do that, it'll be on the 5th of August (Thursday) and who knows when else.

Plotting Games

There is always a temptation in games to over-plot things, I think. Or, at least in my case, throwing out plots like a kid tossing a meal at a wall and seeing what sticks. For a change, I'm not doing that with Carolis. Barring anything really weird, the first part of the game should, in some form or another, go as planned. I.e. PCs meet, get introduced, solve some problems, get to the attention of Important People (which can, of course, be either good or bad). From there it's all open-ended, since PCs tend to create plots just by thinking about things, and I tend to make stuff up without knowing why and sort of hope the reason surfaces or, in the case of Ios, a player suggestion like a vampire-werewolf is too much fun to not use.

In most D&D games, though, the biggest problem tends to be getting the PCs together. The way I hope to do it is run the first few sessions (and any pre-games for players who make pcs ahead of time (or on time, Chaos and Caltak :p)) is to do it all as one-on-one and the PCs all end up together as mercenaries of sorts. Mind you, this is helped by the players knowing this naturally. (:

How it'll all happen depends entirely on PCs and players, as does where the plot goes. Most games develop a kind of inertia at some point that keeps them going on, and on, and on, without much real "plotting". This is, on the whole, a good thing. OTOH, there is going to be a specific progression for the game. I do have one or two endings in mind, and some twisted surprises to throw at PCs, but in the end it all depends on what the PCs do, and why they do it, and what they want to do. For good or ill, they're the stars of the story, and if we tell it well it's going to be fun and good and a source of lots of quotes.

The plot is nothing more than the beginning. The PCs choose the middle, and the end. With luck, it'll be one they like and survive. If not, Sparkie always has the final laugh, over every plot and every plan.

Infection

Just something odd I did today.

My name is Martin Graves. Was Martin Graves. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything anymore. It started when the dead began to mail me postcards, from Hell, filled with things no one knew except them and me. My brother, my sister. The secrets siblings share. I never told anyone they were doing that, it didn't seem proper. And, besides, I am/was the head of security, at Nullsoft. Genetics stuff, mostly. Trying to conquer death, to make us immortal.

But there is more to life that life. There is death. Without it, there is just living, forever. And ever.

I see that now. Gerard died firs, then Blinkins. McGover was never, in his sleep. All the scientists. All the researchers. It was like a plague had struck us. Some talked about nanovirii and the like, but no one knew. We just knew we were dying, one at a time, a piece at a time. Death was coming for us.

Henderson had a theory, that we were all machines, infected with Spirit, the spark of life. That without it we'd just keep going and wind down, like clockwork toys. That it kept us here, and burning like sparks in an empty void. He'd been really drunk. He'd died first, his heart failing. 26, and a heart attack. No one could explain it, though we tried.

The government has quarantined us. Rogers has been stalking the hallway, claiming he's Death, and come to take us back home. It would be funny, if he hadn't died last week. No one else seems to notice this. It's not like he's changed. Even dead, he's still an asshole. I'm scared to bring this up with the others, in case they think he's alive. But I know he's dead. He made a break for the door, and I shot him. I was following orders. Only following orders.

They might take my gun away, if I told them. And I think he's waiting for that, waiting for me to be alone. I've been trying to read the notes the others left, deciphering them for hidden meanings, but I can't make head or tails of it, or anything else. We're dying, for something we never did, accessories to the murder of death.

We were just trying to wipe out the virus. Only now I wonder which was the virus, death or life. The walls have been changing lately. I can see other places, other people, like veils are being pulled back. I think I have a fever. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm already dead and just don't know it. I'd like to ask someone.

I put the gun to my head, to see if I'd felt it before. I wonder if I can kill myself, if I'm dead, if death will let me die that easily. I don't do it. I think Rogers is laughing, but I can't hear him. I think they're all dead, and I'm the virus sent for them, and I don't know it. I think I'm insane. I think I'm the only living person in the world, surrounded by robots.

I want to take them apart and see if they bleed, but I could be the robot. It might all be a trick, and I don't know it. They're all rotting flesh sacks, the stink of death and fear like a drug in the air, and I'm the same. Oh God. Oh God. I need help. I help need.

It's almost a relief, when Henderson comes in, with the shotgun, and tells me he's God. It's so much easier now, cleaner. All my problems melting away. I'd lie and say it didn't much, but it did.

I cut myself with a paper clip, of all things. I'm not sure why. My name is Martin Graves. Was Martin Graves. I don't know anymore. It started when the living began to send my postcards, from Hell, the kind of things only they knew. My wife, my son. The secrets families share. My new bosses discovered out I was getting letters, and they'll be next. I've been told it has to be this way. I'm doing a job now. Following orders. Only following orders. I'd eat my gun, but it wouldn't taste good, would just be symbolic. Just be another thing that doesn't mean anything, like their letters I kept hidden in my trunk.

KIAEB Plot

PC level is 3-4. (3 if you want a very odd PC idea ,or something Really Special for your PC.) The PCs are going to be a bandof wandering adventuerers/traders/mercenaries in the pay (or employ) or whomever. As such, the players will need to decide among themselves what PCs will be the defacto leaders and the like.
While a good crossing of classes can be good, I am not enforcing anything, so it's up to the players to get together and decide if anyone wants to be a sorcerer/wizard/druid type or whatnot. (And no, players won't be penalized or rewarding for what class they pick.)
Keep the mercenaryish nature of the PC group in mind when deisgning your PCs. Feel free to work with each other for complementary skills and the like if you want.

Total players will be 6, maximum (and 4 minimum). If you want to play, read the game site over, talk to Alcar, and other players. Find out if it's a game you'd like to play in, and we'll go from there.

Current Prospective Players are:
Keith
Sintaqx
Caltak (will have to leave games 1/2 hour early)
Chaos (will arrive at games 1/2 hour late)
Tass (?)

If there are others, I do not know of them.

KIAEB Notes (The D&D Game)

Okay. This game is set in the kingdom of Carolis, which is large and isolated and 99.9% human. (I was tempted to include halflings, but they're useless so I didn't.) The campaign is going to be called KIAEB (Ask Keith to explain it if you want to know :)). The actual format and nature of it isn't known, yet. This will depend on who is playing what, and what they want to do with their pcs. I.e. What KIND of game do the players want?

Political Intrigue?
Hunting down Monsters?
General Quest?
Work for Merchants named Blok?
Mercenaries in the pay of anyone at all?

Depeding on what players have in mind for their characters I'll come up with a specific idea (by late nexk week; at which time anyone who wants to play should have a PC done. Character creation guidelines WILL be done tomorrow and put up) and the campaign itself will begin the week after (Wednesay, the 28th, with possible one-shots beforehand).

Keep in mind that, one way or another, your PC will be joining a group of other adventurers. Loner-types are strongly discouraged, as are the kind of personality that makes others want you dead very quickly. Giving a detailed background means I have more to work with for your PC, and that's always a good thing.

Some stuff I have yet to write up for the game but you should keep in mind:

• Females are second class citizens. In the nobility, this is because only males inherit power and titles. This mentality has filtered down to the cities themselves. In the countryside, it's more a simple division of labour. Few men in the country really think of women as second-class (and never say it unless they want to never marry), it's more than everyone knows fighting is the man's job and giving birth and looking after the home is the woman's.
  Basically, there are no women fighters. None. No one is going to train one, because it would be stupid.
  
• The only exceptions for females to be classed are sorceresrs (who have no damn choice) and rogues, who are equal-opportunity thieves and females are more likely to get off with lighter sentences.
  
• Wizards all come from the nobility and are trained in the Academy. They serve their family, and the king, and the nobility in general. They do not go out and adventure normally, if ever.
  
• Druids are rare, and tend to be solitary wanderers healing animals and the like. Their belief system follows the rule of 3 for witchcraft and is very pagan and archaic. Most people think them a little daft.
  
• Barbarians are rare, since most people who can be taught to fight are picked up by the Baron and become real Warriors (some, rarely, make knights). And there is no part of the kingdom not under a barony (With one or two unique exceptions run by mad spellcasters).
  
• Sorcerers are feared, pitied, despised and hated universally. They're born with magic and it manifests itself no matter what they want. They don't understand it, no one can teach them it, and they're generally screwed. (There are no noble sorcerers. They have means of weeding said children out of the gene pool and killing them.)
  
• Bards are common, bards casting spells almost unheard of. No bard knows they can do this, and can only learn it from another bard who has done it and, for some unknown reason, is actually willing to teach it. It's not likely.
  
• No clerics. Ditto with Paladins. (While the occassional cleric does exist, there have never been paladins in this world. Yet.)

And that is basically that. Trade is almost universally barter, since the gold and silver mines of the kingdom are pretty much exhausted.

A few other things:
There is no battle between Good and Evil happening. There won't be one. (The characters are, of course, free to decide they are on the side of Good in a battle, but it is more a case of Us vs Them than Good vs Evil.) The PCs are adventurers. Not heroes. They're just people.
There are some Monsters in underground areas, but they're rare and largely myth. Characters may have heard of some, but you don't know any facts about them, just legends.
The setting is not the middle ages. The cities are more renaissance than anything else, and the nobility are searved by lite-rail trains that fly over the ecity and are build and designed by a reclusive oder of techo-mages that few know about. (And no, a PC can't be one.) This being said, outside of the cities the technology level is basically the middle ages since that is what works. Farming is farming, as far as the farmer is concerned, and no fancy machines will do it better than a man and his ox.

Finally, few people travel. They don't have reason to. So the cities are largely built up to almost mythical status by those living outside them.
(Ideally, no PC will be from one of the cities, to make them more foreign.)
And that's all for now :)

New D&D Game

Blame Keith. Blame him a lot. And me, too, cuz I said I'd likely never run D&D again and here we are again and, well, damn it. This time, though, instead of going all-out cliche, or grumbling about the POS that is D&D system-wise, I am endevouring to make it's weaknesses (of which there are many) work with me for a game.

Game time: 11am - 2pm PST, Wednesday-Friday.
This may change, in terms of days, but that's the basic time for the game. So far, Keith and Sintaqx are able to make the time. (Brings back many old memories, too :p)

The setting is Carolis, a kingdom ruled by a powerful king, and an academy of mages who run most of the show behind the scene, as it were. Magic is very uncommon, and magical items almost unknown. Common people (and anyone who is not a wizard) know zilch about magic aside from terror and fear and horrible rumours.

An actual campaign idea will be developed depending on what the players want to play characer-wise, and the kind of game they'd like to play plot-wise.

A few caveats:
PCs will begin the game no higher than level 4 no matter what type of game it turns out to be.
There are no PC clerics. (This can be negotiagted, if someone really, really, really wants to play one.)
There are no non-human PCs. (Unlesss someone wants to deal with *serious* levels of racism and die very quickly.)
The rules are guidelines. The point of the game is to role-play, not roll-play.
In line with that, if you have a PC idea that isn't "allowed" by the rules, it may be allowed anyway. Too often the game rules, in telling you what you can do, do a damn good job of saying what you can't, or making the idea in your head for your PC not possible. I never like that, so I have no problem with fudging things.
Alignments will not exist. Spells used to detect such will only get the current rough idea of the PC, given current actions etc. (So, a pc killing a noble who is planning to murder people is good, but evil to the NPC cleric who thinks they just butchered someone, for example).
I don't use stuff like encumbrance, you don't need to either. (If things get silly, I'll let you know.) Speaking of rules, I'm not big into knowing each rule, and using it. If you recall someone, use it. Otherwise we wing it. The story being told is more important than the system we use to frame it.
Character backgrounds ARE MANDATORY. (Depending on how the game begins the PCs may be required to include some details for the GM to NPC friends and family.)

If, all this having been said, you want to play, reply here or memo/talk to Alcar.

Sparkie thanks you, because your PCs will all die horrible deaths.

Intro to a game idea...

It used to be the World Trade center, before it became a political message of hate.
There is now an opaque circular building that literally reaches into the clouds where it once stood.
The city used to be called New York, before they came.
Now, we call it Dino-1.

We call them Saurians - we had no notion of their true name, nor anything else about them when they first came. The first wave captured our world, 10 short months ago. Small creatures, 2' high at best, armed with strange weapons and forcefields. Hundreds, thoustands of them, swarming into every city. Within days, it was over. The larger ones - the dinosaurs of our stories - that came down from the heavens in living spaceships, were almost a relief, a boost to our broken egos at having lost a war against such a small foe.

The Home, as they called it, was built in a hour. They did know what what the WTC had meant, hadn't cared that the Statue of Liberty was famous: they came to conquer, not to care. Why here? Why now? We may never know. Helpless before their technology and resources, the last scientists developed an AI, Magi, and fed it all the secret and terrible things governments had kept hidden, for greed and the common good.

Before they died and it was put off-line, Magi sent out a virus, a virus that struck random people and changed them, into something far more than human. Heroes, perhaps. The last hope of mankind, marked by the last of the Wise, and hunted by the dinosaurs who will not let anything interfere with their plans.

"Beholding Love"

Just a nice sonnet I did up a few days back on very little sleep. It's a love poem. Sort of.

"O love, last night outside your home I stood
Waiting for you to come and meet with me
"I will not hide from love," I said: I wooed
You to come so we could togther be.
O love, that love could enter your bright eyes
And make you see me as I truly am!
Our love 'twill be doomed if the romance dies
And both our families will call it a sham.
Understand I am opening my heart,
And that I wait alone for you outside
Who has been hurt before but shall not part!
Even tho you shook your eyes I shall bide.
O! my Love! with tears unshed my eyes blur
I am not stalking you, my beholder."