Merry Xmas. You know. The usual

Just a quick thingy to wish people a happy christmas. Wow. That was fast.

Erm, and new year too, I suppose, while I'm at it. And Valentine's Day, and birthday ... okay, I'll stop now .

FYI, Spark'll be offline while I'm in Victoria (due to computer being shut off and getting a much needed rest from being left on a lot), and I won't be on IRC. I'll probbaly check this blog and the message board a few times but that's it.

Have fun :)

Amazing Adventuers!

Yes! It's the title of the next game. Rejoice!

More information can be found on the forums. While 4 Ways is likely to last until april or so, given the plot, this'll be the game that cometh next. Why up so early? Mostly to begin ideas. The super spy/Johnny Quest/Venture Bros style setting should be fun, but I really don't know much about it. So ... make stuff up! Add people, places etc. even if you might not be playing.

It'll be fun! Honest.

GAME TIMES

Okay. So. Games (mine at least) will be off from the 20th of December until the 10th of January

So there'll be LOLAD on the 13th and 4 Ways 14th of December. Despite having the 20th and 21st possibly off from work, games won't run then since players have RL and Xmas and all that. The first week of January is going to be work and classes and getting all that crap sorted out, so there won't be classes that week.

4 Ways will resume on January 11th. Since Reflections (which I plan to play in, though work may get in the way some weeks :)) will be on Wednesdayd and I have a class Monday nights, game times for LOLAD will be infrequent and depend upon what days f Thurs-Sun I get off.

Given a choice between Reflections and LOLAD, I'd choose the former. Why? because I haven't played in a game in a very long time, and am looking forward to it for a nice chance of pace. In all honesty, much as I like LoLaD, I'd rather play in Reflections than run another game. I've haven't just ran one game in a long time, and it will be a fun change of pace.

Toss comments about this up here, or in #game1. Toodles.

Last Flight of the Golden Condor

Last Flight of the Golden Condor
(December 2004)

It started when they told him he didn't exist. That was the beginning. Only his friend saw him, and his friend was convinced he was a giant bird most of the time anyway. Everyone else just laughed, even the man with the rubber ducky. They all said he was just another delusion, and BB was given more drugs.

The drugs never really worked. BB was nuttier than a fruitcake, which is generally considered almost impossible given the real ingredients of fruitcake. So they resorted to peer pressure, the people of the Street. They told BB over and over that he wasn't a bird, that his friend wasn't real.

It ended when got angry. It wasn't right, these people saying he didn't exist, treating these poor children like puppets and not people. So on the day BB was forced to agree, the day the broke the yellow-bellied kid for the final time, Snuffy cried. A single tear, suspended between earth and heaven.

All eyes locked on it, watching it fall. No one noticed the knife, until it was too late. In some ways, it had always been too late. The grouchy kid died first, and the "real" vampire who counted socks, and the two queer kids with the duck. Snuffy enjoyed their faces when he cut the duck apart before their eyes. The fat kid who ate all the cookies took more time, just because even Snuffy had trouble actually finding his neck.

Doctor Gina went quick, and the rest of the staff the same. They tried to run too late, not believing in him until they had no choice. Mister Hooper tried to get BB to call 911.

"You want me to use the phone Looper?"

"Hooper! It's Hooper! Hooper!" Hooper began screaming at him, for the last time as it turned out.

BB looked at the body, and at Snuffy. "You snuffed Hooper."

Snuffed nodded gravely.

"I was lying to them," BB said. "I really believed."

"Can you tell me how to get, how to get blood stains off?" Snuffy sang.

BB shook his head, his pants staining yellow. "C - cold water. C is for cold," he managed, and lashed out spastically, sending the knife flying.

Snuffy watched it fall and drew his second knife. "I have two tusks," he explained. And the it got very bad, very bad indeed.

The police found BB, curled up beside a knife, and sobbing. He wasn't dead, not yet, but cut all over, as if he'd tried to skin himself alive and failed. He was screaming about his missing feathers, the big boy, as they tried to stop the blood from flowing. He died, the killer, singing that it wasn't easy being red, and no one ever asked questions about a second knife. No one heard the laughter in the air, from the creature who wasn't there but everyone agreed the street was haunted by something that left sesame seeds everywhere.

Nothing happened.
The end of the world, and no one came.
That is the sum of my report, sir.
I never saw the eyes.
The town of Millhaven is small and it's bleak and it's cold. But there is nothing special there, nothing of note.
A child of Norn, the raven-girl, the one without an angel. Why can't I speak?
The demon didn't manage to become a god. We don't know why he failed.
The FBI sent someone, with guns. I'm trying to tell you.
It seems to me that it was all a lie. There were no faces in the dark.
Sometimes it does turn out to be nothing. A blip in the cosmic radar, even if the First Man's sister was there. We never did have proof of it, or that she exists.
What did he do to my head? Why can't I say anything?
"I am the man for whom no god waits". Sir? Oh. Something that came to me. I don't know why. I do feel funny.
Try and read between the lines! Try.
I gues that means it's over, sir.
I saw the boy with the hole in his head. All God's children they all gotta diiiie!
The report is on your desk. No one to recruit, no one to deal with. The sleepers must have cleaned up the mess. Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure doing business with you. When next you want to end the world, let me know.

Inspirations for this game:

http://home.austarnet.com.au/glazfolk/songs/faces.htm - Faces in the Dark
Xodiak
And, of course, The Curse of Millhaven and O'malley's bar.

Games off this week

Like it says in the topic no one reads :)

Need to finish novel. Speaking of which, going to do that.

So, UA or 4 Ways will end ....

So, UA or 4 Ways will end ....

Any requests for a next game?

I have a low-key Unbreakable style supers game in my head, but I'll probably wait a while before running it. (Mostly to give the genre a break.)

I would like to run a high-insanity short term game sometime soon, based on "make anythng you want, go nuts with it" Weirdest PC concepts possible, and go from there. Using whatever system the players want, rolling the PCs up in said system, and deciding if, oh, a D&D wizard can hit a Garou hippy on the fly, in free form style, but using dice for sheer insanity of it all.

Paranoia is an option, but a viable Paranoia campaign would be difficult, I think. Ditto for Toon and Risus.

But if anyone has ideas/concepts/suggestions for a new game and/or setting, I'm all ears. Chaos and I have been fiddling around with a Star Wars game, but I think I'd be a better player than GM for such a setting.

System wise, something new/simplewould be preferred. D&D is just too ... limiting .... for a world, so it's out. GURPS is nuts. Personally I'd like to try somethiing we haven't before that everyone would find fun to give a whirl.

So toss up ideas, and let the fun begin!

(This is from the 4 Ways Forum so please post replies and comments there. Thanks.)

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.