On Numenera

Numenera is an odd, weird game (in terms of both setting and system). It's basically far, far future science-fantasy using mostly a d20 die mechanic, where only players roll dice vs various target numbers. Character creation is very nicely done. You get an adjective (tough, charming etc. from a list), a framework (glaive, nano, jack: aka fighter, wizard, thief) and then a focus unique to your character that gives a) abilities and b) story hooks to tie them to other PCs. The framework is not a class in a strict sense of the word and also includes a variety of backgrounds to choose from, so a glaive whose background is via Intensive Training is different than one whose abilities are Inborn and the like.

Unlike other RPGs, experience is awarded for discovery: you find something old, you make something new or you learn the how and why of X, whatever X may be. The world is ours, but over a billion years into the future and littered with the remains of at least eight previous mighty civilizations, to say nothing of alien visitants stranded on the world for millennia along with extradimensional doors and entities whose motives are at best alien.

Into this world come the PCs. Humans are back in the world, though there is strong belief they went away for some time -- though no one knows why, or even where. The current  world can be seen as a rough analogue to 1000 AD in terms of city and town size and the dangers of travel. Wonders and marvels do exist, but they knowledge of using them has been lost, misplaced or the items were never intended for human use at all.

It is a new world, and the PCs are among those will help fashion a new future out of the worlds that the past left behind.

Notes!

Every world that develops a communication array gains access to The Game. In some cases, it becomes one channel out of many, or the powers that be in a world hide its existence (for a short time or forever) from the people proper. In some cases it is the dominant betting event in a world, in others training to be in it is a lifetime’s occupation. In some, it is even a religion.

There are often multiple on-going Games and contestants are drawn from throughout the multiverse to participate in gaining wealth, fame, fortune and whatever else The Game might offer. No one is quite sure where The Game is located, let alone how the staff select contestants. Some believe it began life as a vast zoo that branched out into creative ways to sustain itself, others believe The Game is eternal and forever and the heart of the multiverse. That no one knows where it is truly located or even who the unseen Producer of The Game is does lead many to distrust it, but evn so The Game goes on.

The Game famously has no rules. It does, however, have referees and linesmen because people do try to cheat and this isn’t acceptable at all. Among the many rules The Game does not have, the following are paramount:

1) Trying to cheat to win is not allowed. When asked what constituted cheating, the host famously said he knew that when he saw it. Getting aid from outside counts, as does trying to leave The Game.

2) Murdering other Contestants is not kosher at all. The casting directors went to a lot of trouble and time to find a diverse group of players and reducing some to laundry problems is not encouraged*.

* It is also not, strictly speaking, forbidden. But no one who has out-and-out murdered another Contestant has ever won, regardless of how justified they were. Killing the murderer of a contestant, on the other hand, is entirely allowed and probably encouraged.

The Host/Presenter is cloned as needed. Please do not kill him without due cause.

Linesmen and Refs are drawn from ex-contestants, among other groups. Killing them is considered a Bad Idea as they are not obligated to be neutral in The Game.

Camerapeople, on the other hand, die pretty often. Running toward danger for the best shot tends to do this.

Refs have the ability to limit/nullify/disable powers as needed. They also oversee security officers who make sure no one is cheating. People try, after all.

Camerapeople are wholly invisible.

Linesmen tend to be quite visible and tough, though not all of them are as impressive as their reputations might claim. Their duty is to stop contestants from breaking the rules that technically don’t exist, most of which involves actions that will ruin ones possibility of winning The Game.

Layout

The contestants quarters are designed to fit their particular needs and comforts to a point. Every contestant is able to survive in everyone’s quarters and throughout The Game everyone speaks the same universal language. All quarters are connected together by a gateway system and mundane doors in a large complex. There are no locks in it and a great deal of communal space exists for contestants to get to know each other both as friends and as enemies.

The medical facilities are very, very good and have been known to even revive the recently dead if need be. This is, however, not a pleasant experience by all accounts.

Sample Scenarios

Duels are common, as are sporting events, puzzles, endurance tests, obstacle courses, capture the flag and most anything else The Game throws at you. Variety is key, as are situations that increase viewership. In some cases contestants will be explicitly forbidden from certain abilities or solutions to a challenge.

The Game(tm)

BECAUSE:

a) it has been a month

and

b) People have been more patient than, say, Sparkie about a lack of games.

So, the system: BESM. 300 points. Ignore skills. No restrictions. No limits*. (No sanity?)

* Management reserves the right to ixnay certain concepts based on PCs being part of a team. Etc.
Making characters directly from an anime/show is frowned upon (not that the GM is liable to catch most of that if one does :)). Recycling/repurposing characters one has played before is entirely fine, to clarify.


The Game. That is all it is known as. It is the multiverses biggest and best reality TV show. Challenges! Battles! Skills! Everything one can imagine and many things that can't be broadcast happen in The Game. The prize for winning the game is monetary, but the actual rewards of fame, fortune and media deals far outstrip mere money so The Game had expanded the roster to include heart's desires, favours, revealing secrets and the like as possible options.

The challenges: Battles (physical, mental and even culinary). Skill tests involving memory, endurance and teamwork.

The rules: Traditionally, none. But no one who has flat-out murdered more than one contestant has ever actually won it. (Killing someone who murders another contestant does not count as murder, according to the rules.) Bad sportsmanship is frowned on and the winner is determined by a huge poll along with the show presenters and the producer being the deciding votes. Popular opinion does not always carry the day but most winners have worked with others and some years multiple-winners were announced. (Once, everyone competing won, but that is far rarer.) Even being in it is source of notoriety and fame for some to carry on to their lives after it is all over.

But this year it is different. This year there are PCs in it, and the multiverse is in for a season of The Game unlike any other it has ever seen. Viewing numbers will go spastic, whole worlds might fall and even the fabled, unseen Producer might be forced to act before the end ....


So: toss ideas about and go nuts :)


Game time(s) to be determined by player availability.

... this worries me

<AlcarGM> "The surgeons were terrified. I had not thought them capable of terror, and yet they hid. The world rang with bells, the floor shuddered. Entire places were -- broken." He tenses, then reaches out to grab your arm.
<Joe`> d100 Dodge 35%
<Sparkie> Joe` d100: 99 Dodge 35%
<Joe`> (( arg, doubles fail ))
* Sparkie kept the 99! SCORE!
<Joe`> (( at least it wasnt a 100 :p ))
............
<AlcarGM> So, last session Sparkie did one roll for chaos. And rolled a 99.
<AlcarGM> <Chaos`^> 1d100
<AlcarGM> <Sparkie> Chaos`^ 1d100: 3
<AlcarGM> <Chaos`^> I'm saving that roll for later
<AlcarGM> <alcar> lol
<AlcarGM> <alcar> I might just allow it, after that 99 :p
<AlcarGM> <Sparkie> WHAT?!?!
<AlcarGM> * Sparkie is going to keep that 99 and use it next session too, then.
* Sparkie is beyond awesome now.
<Joe`> lol

Signum Jot Note: 5 sessions in

Currently we have three players, one dicebot and the game has 5 sessions in the bag. NPCs have been created, the world is slowly getting fleshed out. Characters have made dubious choices (yay!), performed rituals (woohoo!) and begun investigations into scenes of mass murder. As one does. The general idea is that the game will function in more of a slow-burn way rather than, say, 'meet Cthulhu and go mad' way. Everyone makes decisions that seem to make perfect sense and slowly but surely lead them down slippery paths -- and then you do more things, and even more to justify the one you did before and some day look back and have no idea how you came to be who you are.

It should be a wild ride for the players at least, even if the poor PCs might well have cause to disagree.

Sinal City: Notes

Notes for the game inspired by players creations; contributions welcomed. 

          Taxicabs in Sinal City.

Taxis in the city are run by several companies regulated by the mayor’s office.

Sinal Cabs, run by one Damian Dalessio, is the oldest and arguably most famous cab company in the city, famous for its black and white checkered cabs and fact – not boast – that not a single cab has GPS since his drivers know the city inside-outside, able to act as tour guides and supply useful facts as well as the best routes through the city. It takes at least a year of training to be become a cab driver and at least 3/4 of the applicants flunk out.

The company has run into problems lately due to having few vans and having not kept up with having accessible rides and the like, but it is the only company to offer 24-hour cab service and the drivers are well-paid and competent. Sinal Cabs only accept cash payments.

Luxe: No other name. A small fleet of white luxury sedans who offer convenience, exorbitant pricing and special services to most anyone who uses them. They company is filthy rich through not that large as a great deal of profits go into bribing many officials to look the other way over incidents involving their vehicles and/or passengers.

Fleet Street: The yellow taxis of Fleet Street are famous, even though the company is no longer situated on said street in the business district. Fleet cabs are bright yellow, accessible, modern, though the drivers are poorly paid and the turnover rate is high. The owner, one Chiang Yu, recently bought it and has been trying to modernize the company even further by offering delivery of parcels and probably work for the mob, if rumours are to be believed.

Chet’s Cheapike: A bicycle courier service in the city, Chet’s company delivers packages, letters, and sometimes even people on the back of smaller bikes. They have scooters and some motorcycles in their inelegant ensemble and are run cheaply. The company is reportedly near-bankrupt most of the time and Chet is desperate for funding and a way to break into the ‘big leagues’, as he sees taxi companies, as well as prevent any bike sharing scheme from operating in the city.

Minicab Inc. Licensed private vehicles that operate as cabs. A lot of illegal ones exist but there are some legal ones that get to use designated rush-hour lanes and carpooling ones at all hours, the same as actual taxis. The company has come under fire recently for allowing illegal minicabs to function with their blessing.

The black cabs. There are some, reportedly working for some of the high-end clubs and hotels. Black cabs take any passenger, accept different forms of payment and ask no questions. Nothing is known for definite about the company and some claim it is just a rumour certain minicab operators started.

More to be added as needed/warranted. 

Signum Notes

Unknown Armies is, at the core of it, a horror game. It's about the horrible things people do in the pursuit of their goals, and often the equally horrible things that must be done to stop them. That's the horror of it all: what people will do. The weird shit is the setting, the nature of the world the PCs exist in. For Signum, this is the PCs starting off as functionally normal people who exist in the everyday world, who interact easily with normal people. How long the remain that depends on what they do, and why they do it.

Because normal people are crazy. They believe the world is sane, that it's not possible to say "Fuck you" to reality and actually succeed. They don't understand that the world is about you, that you can shape the universe into new shapes, make things happen by dint of luck, effort, and probably some unpleasant memories afterwards, but omelettes and eggs. And if you can do this: what do you do with it? Do you become the horrors, however noble your goals? Do you fight against them and try for any success, no matter how small?


Your character is, effectively, Edward Snowden. You have learned Secrets. You have some idea of how the world really works. You know the mundane explanations are a lie: so what do you do with it? Do you reveal secrets to others, use them for yourself, pretend you never knew and let it eat you away inside? Do you wonder why no one else revealed these secrets? And if you're asking those questions, how far will you go to find answers?

Being a UA PC is about doing the right thing, yes, but it's also about consequences. Always, it's about consequences. What you do, what you're willing to do, and just how far down the rabbit hole of madness you will go to find a perfect sanity.

signum somnia

“Life is about the wrong turns. Down side streets, back alleys, the roads maps won’t admit to having. There are beaten paths people know to avoid, paths through words and worlds not meant for human use. People see weird shit all the time: shadows that don’t seem to be normal, sudden noises where no one is standing, that feeling of being watched even when you’re alone. The thing is, see, there is something. We shape the world, the world we make shapes us. There aren’t words for it. Sometimes there are barely feelings. But if we forget how to unsee things, they are there:

The babysitter no child ever spoke back to, the street bum people treat as if he was a king, the child with the creepy eyes and the smile full of sharpness, the teenager who sliced her own arm and swore blind that her cuts could speak to her, the boy who ran across broken glass without a single injury. We dismiss it as miracles when we see it, but it’s something other. There is a way to bend the world to your desires, to bend yourself to the world, and if you do it – if you can become it – maybe it’s worth it. I don’t know.

“I used to work for a bank. I won’t tell you which one. I took this wrong turn in the open street, met a homeless man in a cardboard box he’d scrawled mathematical symbols on. “To keep the angels of angles away,” he said, as if it made all the sense in the world. I gave him ten dollars because his eyes were so worn out. Ran into him across town two days later, a week after that. I started reading his box, God help me. It was there. The rise and fall of stock markets, predicted a week in advance, all scrawled out on a cardboard box.

“He had friends, took me to meet them. I followed. I couldn’t not follow. Hook, line, sunk. There were twelve of them, no idea what they were doing, predicting the future on cardboard. I added a few lines, just – well, honestly, just because. I won’t say what happened. I had to quit, accused of insider trading. I never met him after that. But I have my own box now. I’m inventing my own math. I think I can do it, if I forget enough – get my life back, I mean. I don’t know. I just need two bucks, for a new Sharpie. I could make you famous. Two lines. That’s all I need to write.

“It’ll last until it rains on my box. I wish I was lying. You should go. If you look too hard, if you pay attention – just go. It’s safer. It’s safe. I don’t know if I want safe again.”

Signum Somnia [Signal Dreams] is a street-level Unknown Armies campaign set in Sinal City, a sprawling metropolis of skyscrapers and slummed ringed by suburban nightmares where dreams go to die. The city is old and run-down. Think Detroit but with a population that’s more New York melting pot. The city isn’t a bankrupt ruin, but some can see it from where you are – and others are doing their damnedest to prevent that. Things fall apart, but some centres can hold. People can make a difference, even if it is in ways – and by means – that they never knew.

System notes: Standard 220 point UA character creation (poke Sparkie for a sheet). Adept schools won’t exist; it’s very much more that each adept does their own thing – some adepts of one school will know one spell, some another, each approach it in different ways. Avatars are more powerful, though quietly so. Regardless, one is still bound to a system (taboos) or a paradigm (adepts) and normal people are not.

A lot more weird than flat-out horror. People with odd talents, genuine psychic shit, people with just some odd/strange knack and the like exist. The PCs may number among them or they may not. Artifacts exist and are pretty damn weirdly dangerous (think The Lost Room) and people know a lot more than they ever admit. The world is chock-a-block full of the weird and the ways people deal and cope with it. If you’re a PC, you deal with it by becoming part of it, by grabbing the tiger by the tail and using it for your own ends, however mundane or glorious they may be.

Setting notes: the game is conceived as being more occult ghetto than underground; the internet has only helped the spread of dis- and misinformation and for every person with a cell phone pic of weird shit there’s a dozen others with photoshop and too much time on their hands. Everyone is stumbling in the dark, but some people are stumbling in the right direction.

Characters: Street-level UA. You have a trigger event(s) in your background, you may be a bit weird or have run into weird but you’re not wandering about leaping in front of cars to juice yourself up with power. At least, not yet. Keep in mind that the PCs need goals and aspiration and what separates PCs from NPCs is often that PCs do go out and get stuff done. Most of the world sees weird stuff and flees to their local church or a psychiatrists office: you buck up and deal with it. However you do. Skills should be less generic and more fitting into the tone of your character and what they'd do with them.

(Friends and family are both encouraged and useful in the same. Give the GM plot-fodder and he will be happy. So will Sparkie.)

Campaign: The world will be built based around the PCs, given the characters and NPCs you make. MSG me/each other with stuff you want/don’t want to see and the game shall build itself around all of that. The core of the campaign is that the PCs are discovering about Weird Shit and doing things about it: they’re learning more about who they are, how the world works and what do do with that knowledge. 

Players: Thus far, Caltak. There will be no set time for sessions, unless players desire it. Time ending up a little weird will be just be one more things for PCs to get used to, after all....

Fear the dicebot!

<AlcarGM> u5
<Sparkie> AlcarGM u5: 6 from [3, 2, 2, 6, 5]
<Tommie`^> sparkie
<Tommie`^> when'd her dice go up to 5?
<AlcarGM> Ah, ooops. Meant 4.
<Tommie`^> sure
<Tommie`^> whatever
<Tommie`^> i'm afraid what a u4 might roll anyway

The time of the four is upon us again....

The Time: Now.

Setting: Modern earth.

Players: 4 max.

Characters: Entirely up to each player. Human. Occupations, age etc. variable.

System: OVA-Risus,as follows.
Everyone has 2 free dice to roll in any action they can reasonably attempt. Cliche dice are added on top of this (max one cliche in use at a time) if one has a fitting one. PCs have 9 dice to put into cliches. Only 1 cliche can have 4 dice, all others must be 1-3.
In addition, every PC has 1 die in ‘special’, which can increase or alter as the game progresses.

All pcs have 2 dice in flaws. (Either 1 2-die flaw, or 2 1-die flaws. Entirely up to the PC. Flaws that adversely affect gameplay won't be allowed. (Such as making a PC if your name is Kentari).)

Health and endurance exist; the GM will keep track of both.

Game Premise: It’s the end of the world. It wasn’t until today, but each PC wakes up, begins their day and finds out they have become one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, aka their 'special' cliche. Angels and demons, unseen to regular humans, are warring over the fate of the world as they always have and it is the four horsemen who are the deciding votes. They are human, because of Rules, and each has terrible power you must constrain or risk bringing about the end of the world. If you die, some other person becomes the horseman and they may not be near as moral as you are ….

The horsemen are as follows: Death, Pestilence, Famine and War. Players can pick whatever one they’d like, with the proviso that something in their characters background/cliches links them to that. (An anorexic or author of a diet book could be a basis for Famine, for example).

All you know is that you have been given terrible power (by Whom is unknown) and can, if you all desire it, end the very world you live in. There are angels and demons circling you all, trying to make you make one choice or another and the power you’ve been given is so easy to use and so very, very tempting.

Note: Famine has been taken.

..... internet explorer. As a magicial girl anime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTUlF7NA2o

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: stat every broswer as a magical girl in BESM.

Games!

Game stuff shall resume in December. Probably NOT OH, I suspect. For a few reasons.

I have a couple of ideas rummaging in my head; toss any my way during November.

Basic thoughts:

• 2-3 player game, max. 
• Setting and system variable. (Ova Risus has been at least decent for a simple but not too simple system.) 
• Game plays at least twice a week.
• Player input VITAL: aka, given Setting and System, what kind of PC(s) do you want to make. How do you want them to grow? What do you want them to get out of the game?
• etc.

I prefer modern world to Fantasy (in terms of needing less work to do pre-game stuff). Toss ideas and thoughts my way and I'll try to make a setting up from them in November while not writing things.

Only Heroes: Side Sessiony Goodness

OH Side sessions are being offered this week. HUZZAH! We've had eight sessions so far and the game is going smoothly, PCs jelling together not unlike food that Prudence makes. You've beat villains, hired a PR person, arranged for a lawyer and a secretary with admirable levels of paranoia and genre-savvy. (Or oddity: I doubt most super teams make having a secretary any kind of priority :) )

The goal of the side-sessions is time-stretching RP stuff. Clothing shopping, groceries, wandering the neighbourhood, playing cards and chatting. Basically ways for the PCs to get to know each other and NPCs better. Also, PCs get to advance and work on PC-specific plot threads. They'll be offered this week on Saturday (July 27) and the Monday and Tuesday (July 29 & 30). I'll probably offer this every X sessions or so as I don't want the game to bog down in side-sessions.

But I'm OK with that if it leads to more dice. - Sparkie

My Side of the Only Heroes Situation

So as is apparent to everyone, the whole thing escalated into quite a dramatic situation. I get the impression I offended people, and while I honestly still don't understand the cause for the level of emotional response, I still want to apologize to those people for it. I'm sorry.

Alcar compared it to causing a car accident behind one's self and never seeing it happen, but I don't think that's exactly apt, since I see that there is apparently a problem, I just don't really understand why. From my perspective, it's more like the following metaphorical scenario:

----
Four friends and I agree to all eat lunch together on a certain day, but on that day I'm delayed by having to talk to a teacher and so I end up showing up to lunch period ten to fifteen minutes late, and everyone is already sitting at a table together and eating. They all picked out their food together, but because I was late I didn't. One friend had something for me to eat, but when he showed it to me, it turned out it was something I found to have an odd flavor and I may have been mildly allergic to some of the ingredients. So I went and got some food which I like to eat, but unbeknownst to me, some of my friends thought that new food was gross.

As I returned to the table, two of my friends suddenly jump up from their chairs angrily. They grab my lunch, throw it in the trash, and push me out of the cafeteria, intending to lock me out entirely. I manage to pull aside the one who seemed the most upset, who was also the same one who had offered me the food, and attempt to talk to him about it. He won't really explain why he's so angry, but he finally says he'd be okay with me coming back and eating lunch with them, as long as I don't ask him what food I should pick out to eat.

I go through the lunch line again and pick out some food that is almost identical to what my friends were eating, trying my best to choose things that won't somehow offend them, and then I show it to each of them. The two friends who hadn't been angry in the first place nodded their approval right away, and the one I talked to earlier didn't want to give an opinion, but didn't stop me from sitting down. However, the other friend who had been angry refused to look and declared that I shouldn't be allowed to eat any lunch at all, since I showed up to lunch period late.
----

So from my end, I truly don't understand why the issue of the deadline is enough to cause this level of turmoil. As far as I can tell, the primary point of having a deadline was to ensure everyone could give feedback and have input on what each other person was making. And after the snafu with the first character I made, I did everything I could to illicit input and feedback on a new one, but didn't receive any. So I tried really hard to just tailor the new one to fit the group and the other characters as well as possible, and I got approval right away on it from two players, so I figure I must have done an okay job of it.

In the end, I only have one person denying me entry, and the stated reason is the the deadline. The thing is, I do have a character that was approved before the deadline, and while I wasn't entirely sold on it at the time, if the choice is to play that character or not play, I'd choose to play it. But to be honest, I really do feel like the latest character I made would fit the group better than that one. I'd probably have a better time playing it, and other characters would probably have a better time interacting with it, compared to the pre-deadline one. But if the deadline is the end-all-be-all, I could just use the one that was approved in time.

Sparkie would like everyone to know who the best dicebot ever is

<AlcarGM> Gas-Mask grabs the back of his head, whimpering in pain from the blow and checks his mask and the tank fearfully. "I ... don't ... I surrender. Please?"
* Faith`^ zaps him with the taser while he's pre-occupied
<Faith`^> =p
<AlcarGM> New Round :)
<AlcarGM> lol
<Owlgirl> "Surrender accepted."
* Owlgirl reads him his rights :P
<AlcarGM> Faith zaps anyway? :)
<Faith`^> yup!
<AlcarGM> Dice!
<Faith`^> 2d6+4
<Sparkie> Faith`^ 2d6+4: 14(10)
<AlcarGM> 2d6+2 - pure sparkie luck?
<Sparkie> AlcarGM 2d6+2: 14(12) - pure sparkie luck?
<Faith`^> wat?
* prudence *stares*
<AlcarGM> ..... really?
<Owlgirl> hahahahaha