Tales from Fairview: the end of February thing

Okay. February has ended, It is Wednesday of the second week fo the campaign. We've had 20+ sessions and are now up to 5 players. Current plot threads include: The Grey Man, The Grey Men, the Stoffels, ninjas, school and work, other magicians and possibly werewolves being beaten up for justice. Other plots include Leon finding a BF for his daughter, what is happening to Joni's foster brother the slow destruction of Peter Danier the kendo club president and the utter apathy of the police force in responding to anything at all.

Upcoming plots include a Praetorian Academy-sponsored fencing tournament (This weekend in game: mark it on your calendars!) and presumably Eugene Stoffel either going right around the bend, clinging to the shores of sanity or taking a long vacation.

So far the overall linking plot is the Grey Man's threat to destroy the city (somehow) and that the Grey Men, who claim to be watching events, seem to find most of the PCs worthy of study and examination. That the self-called watchers have taken to using guns and knives and trying to kill for information just makes things more interesting.


Things to keep in mind:

Plots will NOT come looking for PCs that often. If you want your character to be involved, get involved. They need to go out and do things. Visit and/or spy on NPCs and PCs, get to know people outside a school/work setting, meet people, make use of their weird abilities to find out what they are capable of, etc. Go to work or school, fine. But your character can go out after, have dinner, visit a bar or pub, go for a walk in the park, meet their neighbours. Boring characters make for a boring game, after all. If you feel the character needs to be pushed out of their comfort zone to do so, chat with the GM and other players for ideas.

Fairview: 9 sessions in

To date: 3 presessions and 4 official sessions (really 6, counting the other-night ones). Currently all the PCs have met each other*, if only briefly, and have yet to get along. I suspect that running presessions where pcs do not meet is not something I shall do in the future and that, ideally, everyone will know everyone else before a game begins.
* Bea excepted, since Fen is away for a couple of weeks.

Plot wise, there are grey men (who seem to have something to do with dreams) following certain PCs, a man called the Grey Man who seems to wish the destruction of the city, a cult centred around Roy's brother who seem to have summmoned an angel and several other things that have been hinted at. PC-wise, there is Leon's quest to get his daughter married, Alex's quest for more students and funding, Joni dealing with her foster family and the odd friends and enemies she's developed and Rei's quest to find her brother and not get fired from work. (For her part, Bea is looking for a teacher of magic and has claimed an otherworldly entity as her servant, by its choice, which seems to be connected to a Mr. Stoffel, a rich man who owned a lighting company and is now quite dead.)

Some plots are connected, others are not: unlike other games where X is solved and the game ends, this game has been designed with several plots going on at once and each PC knowing things the others do not about some of them. The PCs shall naturally create new plots, adding complications and generally make life for the inhabitants of Fairview quite interesting.

Lastly, a list of NPCs has been put up that is semi-complete.

The end of presesssions

Game time has been set at 9 pm EST, Monday and Thursday nights.

So far, plot-wise, we have 4 PCs, all female (which is new) and three out of four of them have been followed and/or stalked by mysterious parties. Session #1 and on will be party-based and most sessions take place, in the game world, as afternoon-evening, since the pcs have work and/or classes during the day.

Current connections between PCs:
Alex: Has been trying to get students from the HS to her fencing school, has students from it. (Including probably Joni's foster brother).
Bea: has adopted some magical stalker who has gone out to see interesting things for her. Currently fixated on a house in the wealthy part of town. And if any PC needs someone to do do taxes, perfect!
Joni and Rei: Both go to the same school.

There are others, of course, but will not be given away at present (Hint: everyone is connected to Roy.).

The Fall of Fairview Pleasant Pointe

[00:45:59] fennec: "This blog needs to be used more." -- alcar. mon, aug 10, 2009.
[00:46:07] * fennec reads the blog! :b

Kentari decided to make a BESM game also.

Go HERE for details.

Tales from Fairview: taken things

(This shall be updated as PCs are made and changed)

Taken:

Appearance
Chimera
Cthulhu kindred
Demon
Fencing
Fire [by Spark]
Luck
Mind Control/Telepath
Ninja
Pet Monster
True Swordsmanship without cheating

(Current as of: Dec 20)

BESM Game?

ETA: Game will be titled Tales From Fairview

Okay! Here we go: a new game idea, reasoning(s) behind it etc. and so forth.

System: BESM 3e, ~450 points (stats, attributes, skills). Dynamic Powers'll be a no-go unless whatever the player has in mind (like a werewolf) can only be done via that. Power Flux is viable, magic as well.

Time: Mon., Thurs. or Friday night, ~7pm PST (10pm EST).

Setting: Earth, modern day, nameless large North American city. PC ages are entirely up to the players* but we've done enough college, school, etc. games that I'd rather this wasn't one. It doesn't mean pcs can't be school students, just that said things won't be a focus of the game.
* I'd personally be happy if some people want to tackle the 'playing relatives' idea we've bandied about.

Characters: Pick something you want to make and make it. The idea is to go for anime-style fun so being able to hold oneself in combat (both social and phsyical) is probably a good idea. Everyone should take at least one defect [curses are encouraged] and think anime when figuring out powers and the character.

The world: It's this world, only most people ignore the weird shit. People can only handle so much reality, and even less unreality: gas main explosions, drugs, kids being kids and such will be concocted to explain things. Or people freak out and then manage to forget whatever they saw quickly. The government is aware of such things, and the men in black (to say nothing of the men in mauve) are present and tend to quietly make sure no one rocks the boat too far.

Why these abilities exist and how people come into them are unknown, at least to the pcs. There'll be many theories, of course, from aliens to gods and even everyone being game pieces created by gods known as 'players'. It is NOT a superhero game and anyone trying to be one is liable to find a depressing lack of supervillains.

Despite all the awesome, the mundane still exists: family, taxes, jobs and so forth.

Note: How the players connect together'll depend on what you all make. You could all work at the same place, all be Freemasons, have some wealthy friend/patron/sugardaddy in common: it'll depend on what is made.

Note 2: If someone decides something is their schtick (i.e. their thing) then no one else can get it, or at least not be as good as they are. (No one should be obligated to have to get a schtick; it's just for thems who wants one.) If someone wants to be the best-ever master of telepathy, it's theirs, meaning that they can go to 6-7 in the power and no one else can. Chat with other players before taking something as a Big Thing in case it conflicts with someone else's idea. Being 'the werewolf' and such could also count as this.

Note3: Everyone gets 2 levels of mind shield and resistance for free.

Under the hood: This idea was based on me thinking about what made other games fun and a game with a lot of lattitude. Chaos's bdsm game, early lolad and some aspects of kbesm fit into this. Ditto with that you can play character you've made before, if you want to try them in another setting and so forth. Depending on how things go, multiple characters for players might get allowed if people are willing.

Keep in mind that this is a modern earth game. Characters from other earths/times are not encouraged concepts. (Half demons and such, sure, but Victorian Adventurer dragged out of time or dwarf from Fantasy World not so much). Characters should be human or at least able to pass for human under the right light. As well, most characters will just be coming into their powers and/or just aware of most of them. As pcs don't start with handbooks, most characters should have to discover the various abilities they have rather than just knowing they can do X, Y, Z offhand.

The nature of the setting will depend a lot on what players make. Give your character a nature and theme (sci fi, supernatural, magical girl, or whatever) and the game will synthesize all of that together. Keep in mind general anime ideas, fun, and what other people make: if everyone else makes supernatural-themed, and you go for a cyborg some rethinking could be necessary.

Toss thoughts here, in #game1 etc.

Start date: Early January. (Attempting to run games over xmas is fraught with peril :))

Attendance: Need not be Mandatory. If you don't think you can make certain sessions or times, build reasons into the character for it.

Summaries etc: Will be done on the forum rather than a webpage, unless someone else wishes to make one.

And we're back(ish)!

November gives way to December. Games shall return. Exactly what, in terms of having more than 2 players, remains unknown at present.

Whatever runs'll depend on what people feel like, after general consensus.

About the only thing in my head at the moment is a very vague modern besm game, 450 points, make whatever you want, build game around what players make.

Games on hold (that alcar runs)

It's november. The usual :)

Plague of Demons

To give the new side game a proper title.

The premise is that it's 1345, 2 years before the Black Plague strikes, and the current PC, Pam, is a demon hunter. Basically, many (if not all) plagues in history were caused by demons prior to this, and Genghis Khan's invasion was actually a demonic army, or at least had demons in it. Prior to this, demons had little knowledge of how to fight wars.

Pam is a demon hunter for the Order, an organization funded by the Church to protect Christendom -- and the rest of the world -- from the demons of Hell. Pam's family is well known in the church and produce many members of the order and high-ranking priests from the far-off land of England. She's joined the Order, been paired up with 2 other novices (Rose, a healer, and Bede, a thief/magician) who are seeking a supposed Necromancer or Sorcerer north of Rome and Saint Jude's Academy, where they get trained.

Normally, novices wouldn't be sent out on their own, but the Order seems to be short handed and their true mission is to find signs of demonic activity close to Rome. They've been ordered by Abbot Costello to not engage the Necromancer and asked by Gerard, the spear-wielding member of the Order who took them on their first mission, to find out if the Necromancer is a real one and if he can die.

At present they've reached the city of Reti and so far encountered people spell-bound to raise the dead, a sorcerer making a magical Gate and, currently, a weapon in Reti capable of killing Healers. The Necromancer seems aware of them and is throwing up roadblocks to slow them down, but to what end remains unknown.

THE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS

This is not an idle statement: to save the world from itself, several superhuman beings have banded together and taken over the entire world. You are among this number. Each of you is far more than human, capable of feats inspiring both awe and terror. You are the heroes, the guardians of a new age, and this is your story.

The year is 2020, the Year of Good Vision. By 2011, the middle east had enough nukes to turn each other into piles of dust, and all sides were willing to use it. Russia was sliding back into communism, the USA was entering into another cold war, China was threatening to cripple the global economy without using a single weapon, global warming had reached a fever pitch, Africa was a mess the world was having trouble ignoring and everything seemed to be heading down a long dark tunnel with a mach at the end.

That was when a group of superhumans – heroes and villains – got together and declared the world under their protection and law. Superhumans had existed since the first word war (blossoming in the second) but had mostly fought their own battles, dealt with their own kind. They were gods, but their concerns were with heaven and not earth, as one wag put it.

Until they came down off their mountains, put aside their old battles (what became of their myriad foes remains unknown) and the heroes went to the villains and told them that we all lived on the same world, that it meant we were on the same side, and by dint of compromise and debate, the Protectorate was born.

And despite all the naysayers and new age gurus and the revelationsists, the world past 2012 thanks to them. Nuclear weapo ns were destroyed along with those far more dangerous, governments abolished. The hoarded wealth of the Swiss banks was used in africa, along with the monies at the Vatican never used to actually help the poor. Wealth was redistributed, and goods as well.

Eight years have passed, and the world is a far different place. Most of the world counts as a second-world country (running about the level of technology from the early 90s: cable TV, cable for computers, pentium IIIs and cellphones though things are steadily improving). Most governments have been reinstated, organized religions given very limited access to funds, and militaries are pretty much folded into the police for each country. And over it all the gods watch, patient, their vigil neverending.


This is an idea for a superhero RPG game. Basically, it’s about what happens to humans once the superhumans rule the world. It’s about freedom, security (and happiness), duty, power, responsibility and how far we can go to save each other. It’s about angels and choices, power and will, and the world of our desires.

It’s not a perfect world, but what world is? Things are changing, education has become free and the world is slowly moving towards a one-world government. Goods and wealth have been redistributed, the systems of power that permitted the idea of maximizing profit dismantled or limited, and the world is once more looking towards the future. Only the past keeps rearing up its head, and there are those convinced humanity should never have been saved, those who hate the gods for taking away freedoms, and a few villains still around trying to remake the world in their own image.

The PCs are all members of the Protectorate in good standing. The dark side of the dream has begun to rear up and some believe the dream has reached it’s zenith. No one knows how far various factions will go to achieve their ends. The world has been saved, but whether it is better, whether the current system can remain and so forth are debates ranging about the globe, with no real answer in sight.

System: Undecided. BESM at 900-1000 points might do; the template in my head is roughly analogous to the Justice League in that PCs could easily take down regiments, and maybe destroy a city alone, but no one (at least, no pc) running around with the power to break worlds and moons in half. Weaknesses are required, magic preferably not used and each PC should be able to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’ as well as have some mode of transport to get to places quickly.

Toss thoughts here or in game1; this is pretty rough at this point.

This blog needs to be used more.

Like, for real.

Okay ... Game Stuff

Right. E-speaking might work (so far, odds are stacked against it) . but left-handed typing is viable. Slower, but still viable. So, with that in mind, some ground rules of sorts for at least the start of this experiment:

* The GM is unlikely to type out 440+ bits of text; they'll likely get broken up better. Ditto for "text" *action bits* "text", which will probably become 3 lines so people don't end up waiting impatiently. (I may reformat it for Spark's quotes, may not.)
* Spark is liable to be quieter, at least via Alcar usin the msg'd !say #game1 and !me etc. See? This isn't all bad.

Player wise, for games I'll run:
* PCs wandering off alone will slow things up even more. This is pretty much a given.
* If you aren't playing during a game, don't msg the gm.
* If you are playing, try and do it only when necessary; don't expect a quick reply.

If it would make for a good quote, the above is null and void :)


This is pretty much going to be an experiment: try a few sessions, see how it goes. If it ends up too slow, some -- or all -- of the games may be cut until the gm heals.

Games on hold

Catch-all post for this:

Alcar got defenstrated Sat. June 27th. Operation, unfun stuff, and this weekend (July 4th-5th) going to get right arm operatged on -- to attach tendon -- and splinted for six weeks.

As such, all games are on hold that he is running until further notice.

The very minor plus column involves catching up on dvds and such yet to be watched. The other side is lack of writing and/or games will not be fun

Trip Postponed

Well, it turns out the air conditioning in the truck is broken and only works when the truck is in Drive, and since it also happened but to a more severe degree on other new trucks that were issued by the company, it may not get fixed until after he's already been here and gone on the next run. And unfortunately, taking a later trip this summer would conflict with either me going to ConnectiCon or to the start of Fall Classes, so it looks like this trip is postponed until next year or something.

EDIT: Now I'm told there's actually a real possibility it will be fixed in time. Stay tuned for updates. :p

FINAL EDIT: Ok, it's not happening this year. Oh well.

Caltak Hits The Road

Starting Tuesday, July 7th, I will be on the road for 17 days with my step-dad. He's a trucker, you see, and he recently received a new truck from his company which has 2 bunks. We only see each other when he's home for a weekend between each of his 17-day trips or when he takes a week off, and since I'm currently unemployed (by choice) and on summer vacation from college, he offered to take me on a trip. Since I like an excuse to see more of the country for free, I accepted. Now, I hopefully won't be entirely incommunicado during that time, since I'll be bringing my netbook and a few other electronic entertainments, but I can't ensure I'll always be within range of an unsecured wireless network. So, while I'll attempt to be on IRC whenever I can, it may be spotty at best for that time period.