Proposed D&D 5e Campaign: Fury of the Grunts

Everyone knows orcs aren't scary. They'r e foot soldiers of armies lording it over the lesser races. Everyone knows kobolds just hide and goblins grovel to just about anything that comes their way. And they're right, but that's not the whole story. It never is. Because the army of Terzez The Terrible contains many orcs, goblins and kobolds among their number. Which includes you.

There is a battle coming between the Light and the Dark. The Light have fewer people, they're disorganized, you have an amy the size of a very large army. And the Light is going to win. They always win. And that pretty much sucks. But it doesn't mean you can't get a bit of your own back.


Game Premise: the PCs are orcs, goblins and kobolds as part of a large Army Of Evil Darkness. And they get sent on assignments. Some of them even make sense. This is going to be played for fun, weirdness and comedy more than a Serious Dark Game.

Setting: Unnamed. A D&D-style world. Names etc. will be added as the game goes on.

Character Generation: Make a level 1 orc, kobold or goblin PC. Use stats(fun) with Sparkie. (This gives results of 3d6-1 for starting stats.) Figure out a class for the PC and spin it to fit their race as desired.

Time: The game will be played at random times, without a set schedule. Expect PC death, making new PCs etc. as the game goes on.

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.

A Time of Talent and Terror ....

(Updated May 7th)

100 years ago something Happened in the town of Argleton. To this day, no one knows what. All that is known for sure is that Argleton no longer shows up on most maps and no longer seems located in the county it used to be in: and no one can even agree where that was either. It is a town people find due to need and desperation and one very few of them ever leave.

Because being in Argleton changes you, if you let it. And in some cases, no matter what we wish or let, things happen. Some call if the Curse or the Blessing. Most call it the Talent and become capable of strange tricks and skills that are seldom normal at all: a few even have the same trick in varying degrees of strength (this is especially true of siblings) and some people are never even aware they have a Talent at all.

The flip side of all this is that there are those who are dividing the town into the Talented and the untalented, some trying to make use of Talents for nefarious ends and rumours of talents being taken out into the World for experiments or that certain drugs can boost Talents and so forth. Over the years, the minor curiosity of a few people with tricks has blossomed into over 10% of the entire town and the only thing that seems to be holding things together is the mayor, who seems to be immortal, and the chief of police – who is, as far as anyone can determine, immune to Talents.

But even they are hard-pressed to keep a lid on the simmering pot of resentments and ideologies and have/nots that threatens to boil over. As such, a Citizen's Brigade has formed,a semi-official group to straddle the line between law enforcement and by-law enforcement for the town, and the PCs have been selected to be part of this. Perhaps by choice, or for community service, orders of parents or to impress someone: you're reasons aren't important to the mayor, who just wants the town  to hold together.

Important Notes: Argleton is outside the modern world. Radio's work, local tvs work, but anything requires satellites won't, ditto with internet access. Pop culture does drift into it, via people coming into Argleton with items and there are some mysterious traders who seem able to enter and leave and will, often bringing newspapers and DVDs, but knowledge of the outside world is sketchy at best and some of the papers and DVDs seem to come from other earth's entirely.

ARGLETON

Argleton is a large town surrounded by farms, hills and a thick forest. The hill-folk tend to be quiet and insular, whereas the farm folk come in daily with food and supplies. Without the farms, Argleton would be a ghost town and the people on it are hard and tough, able to take what the land deals out and deal it right back when they need to.

Almost all the farmwork is done by hand but even if it wasn't, a town needs more than food and drink to survive. The hillfolk mine deep and sell what they find, but it is the grey-clad Traders who come into town with goods and items from the world that keep the town as part of the modern world, or at least try to do so.

SYSTEM

Risus!

12 dice, no one trait can have over 4-5 dice in it. PCs are expected to have , Life/Job, hobbies and such. While comedic use of cliches won't be allowed (say, pitting 'draw funny faces' against 'martial arts master via the back of a comic book' won't win via drawing a silly moustache on the enemy), the GM may allow PCs to buy double-pump if it fits a specific Talent. 

PCs must have a minimum of 3 cliches at 2 dice each.

Optional rule: Talent dice can be divided further into Power and Skill. So if you have 'burn shit down' at 4 dice, but want it to be more "I get mad and can't control it", you make it Power 5 and skill 3, for example. So any use of just fire comes in at 5 dice, any attempt to actually control the Talent is 3 dice.

Experience: This will be given out infrequently at best and is liable to be 'turn d6s into d8s' more than getting new cliches, unless PCs teach each other ones they know.

Notes

A Talent is pretty much a single trick that defies conventional reality. Some are terrifying, some are rather mundane, and many make no sense to anyone at all. The use of any Talent burns off energy, so how one loses and replenishes that energy is up to each pc. Generally, weaker talents burn les energy, and this holds true for a talent like 'fly in the air' vs. 'manipulate gravity': the more specific a Talent is, the less energy it will burn even if it is quite powerful.

What is known is that Talents develop sometime after puberty and often under stress. Existing skills can become Talents as well, so guy who used to be a Computer Genius is now a Tech Wizard and the like.

KNOWN TALENTS

Brute: Any talent involving one's own body. Toughness, strength, claws and such fall under this very broad rubric.
Elementalist: anyone with a talent for control over one or more elements. This is by far the most common Talent.
Finder: A knack for finding people and things.
Gearhead: Anyone whose talent involves tech and making things. Most forms of genius get lobbed under here.
Green Thumb: A talent generally held by at least one member of any farming family: stuff they plant grows very, very well.
Healer: Healers are uncommon and most end up working at the small hospital that services Argleton.
Lucky Duck: anyone with a talent over luck or possibility.
Mender: The common name for regeneration, but also applies to people who can fix items or stop them from breaking down.
Minder: Anyone whose talent involves the minds of others. Telepaths, naturally, are painted as bigger boogeymen than they really are.
'Porter: Teleporting, phasing and so forth. This is a pretty dangerous talent to the user, but does exist.
Transmuter: Aka a changer: Turn one thing into another. Limited by mass, volume, and a host of other things.

Many minor talents that  are just improved normal ones exist as well and likely increase the amount of people with Talents far beyond the 10% of the town with impressive/visible ones.

Note: The Talent 'lottery' seems set to random. Few people end up with a talent that magically cures or fixes some existing issue in their lives. (For these people, The Witch can be a godsend if they can make a deal for a talent they'd like instead.) There are also very few cases of a Talent physically changing someone, though temporary changes [due to Pumping] may happen at times.

RUMOURED TALENTS

Binder: Someone whose words can bind others to a geas.
Booster: Someone whose sole Talent is to improve the talents of others.
Creator: A person whose talent is to create things from nothing. (Transmuting is confused with this at times.)
Death-touch: Or glare, or anti-healing. The ability to kill with a touch. Considered to be anti-Talent propaganda.
Destroyer: Someone who can will things out of existence.
Phoenix: Someone who can die and come back.
Phoenix, flawed: you die, and you come back with some very minor Talent each time. Rinse, repeat.
Trickster: Shape-shifting. All reported cases have turned out to be Minders making illusions in people's heads.
Vampiric: Talents that involve sucking energy out of others and so forth.

TALENTS THAT DON'T EXIST

Anti-Talent: Someone who can shut down the talents of others; if this exists, logic states it would have been used against the mayor by now.
Medium: If anyone can actually speak to the dead, they are keeping mum about it. (This doesn't mean there aren't charlatans who claim they can, naturally.)
Multiple Talents: Aside from what the Witch can do, no recorded person with more than one Talent exists.
Mimic Talents: Also never recorded, believed impossible as an actual talent.
Seers: Any talent involving the future and time aren't known. Anyone who has claimed post- or pre-cognitive talents has been shown to be lying.
Time Travel: Many would want it, no one has it

MAGIC

Magic is a tricky one: a lot of things a gearhead makes can qualify, and might, but in general magic is known to exist -- at least in Argleton -- and allow practitioners to learn specific spells with limited effects. The use of magic requires time, rituals, will and is exhausting physically, mentally and spiritually. All miracles fall under the classification of magic as well, as much as it angers some of the devout.
Unlike Talents, anti-magical spells do exist and magical charms and talismans of dubious provenance are sold in sketchy shops. Further, no one with a Talent is capable of working magic though they can assist in magical workings.  Most Talents somehow provide an inate resistance to magic. Lastly, magic has never been observed to work outside of Argleton while some few strong Talents have.

PEOPLE:

Mayor:

Rudolph Donison: the nayor of Argleton, he has held the post for over 90 years and still appears to be 32 decades later. His only surviving son, Victor, is now in his 50s and rather bitter that he is getting old and dying. Rudolph has been known to deal with problems first-hand and thus far nothing -- in this world or of any other -- seems able to harm him. If need be, he is simply not where it lands but his body is also impervious to harm. He is quite willing to find and stop monsters to protect the town and his people. No one has even bothered with elections in the last 10 years.

Victor Donison: The mayor's last surviving son, Victor is a cold and bitter man who ran against his father three times for mayor until people decided having elections was rather silly. He has forgiven no one for that and runs a small pawn shop on the outskirts of town, selling weird things and information. Everyone is aware that his father disowned him 10 years ago owing to the horrible things Victor was doing to his son, but the details of those are unknown.
He is also one of the few openly practising magicians in the town.

Treyvan Donison: His grandson, now 18. While he does age, Victor possesses a regenerative talent that borders on the miraculous and allows him to heal from anything he's faced in his life thus far. On the flip side, he does feel pain so he's not exactly eager to test the limits of his talent. He is quiet by nature and tries not to use his family name for anything, but has finished school and is at loose ends.

The police:

Carmichael Jones: The Chief of Police. Carmichael Jones is a tough, grim man who has seen man's inhumanity to man and is known to be extremely hard on talents who abuse their powers against humans. He is human but considered by many to be the meanest and toughest man in the town when he has to be.

Wayland Chashi: The only flat-out Talent in the police department, Wayland is inhumanly strong and deals with rogue talents by hitting them until they don't get up again. It is widely believed that he sold his soul for his talent and that only Jones keeps him narrowly on the side of good.

Lance Christensen: Lance is a new hire for the department, since Jones was told he needed more talents. Lance's talent is to be able to spot the Talent in others and he is very, very good at it but also damn good at his job, much to Jones' chagrin.

The other four police officers work rotating shifts; all are male, which has been causing some fuss of late so the Citizen's Brigade has been ordered to incorporate more women.

The Policed:

Peter Spalding: Peter is a thin, balding man in his 50s who has the record for most time in jail in the entire town owing to a talent for telepathy, the fact that using talents on others is illegal, and lastly that his control has never been all that great. He spends most of his time very much alone and more than a little mad.

Mad Jack Jacks: Jack doesn't have a Talent, while the rest of his family does. Or did, until he dissected them all and attempted to figure out how Talents work. He's known to be somewhere among the hillfolk but beyond that no one is sure what he's doing or why, only that he is Argleton's Most Wanted and has somehow managed to hide from everyone and everything seeking him out for a damn long time.

Lenny Yu: A bright and fearfully ambitious man, Lenny is in his early 40s and convinced War Is Coming and builds things. Often weapons, and then he tests them, though seldom on people. Hence often being in jail and let out because he has a weapon or plan the town can use. He doesn't hate talents, like some people claim, but he hates the fact that they can do stuff that tales him years to learn and work out in mere moments.

Other People:

Mad Madeline: An old woman who is also a finder, though her talent manifests in finding things via seeing through the eyes of animals.

Trader Joe: One of the best-known traders, Joe has phenomenal luck and, for the right price, can find anything for anyone. He is also the only Trader to reveal his appearance, which is that of an albino man. He doesn't reveal how traders leave or return to Argleton and attempts at pushing him lead to finding out just how many people own him favours.

The witch: She goes by many names, none of them real, and moves about. Sometimes in Argleton, sometimes in the world, and currently goes by 'The Dealer', running a casino where you can trade anything for anything, because that is her Talent. If you want to trade something, she can make it happen. Talents, free will, skills, memories, limbs, even one's own life can be traded if both parties are willing. If she was ever human at all, she isn't anymore.

Games!

The itch to run something stirs in the ether. With caveats, because they are pretty:

Player interest at the moment leaned towards a western. (The Weird West rules look simple and decent (and hey, only $1). Player ideas/input can be tossed up on piratepad (ask me for the link) and we'll go from there.

The game in question will run 1-2 times a week, ideally on set nights. Unlike other games of yore, this one is entirely about making fun things and having run rather than having deeper meanings and various Ethical Issues(tm) to be part of the setting, unless players want/include 'em.

If the game idea doesn't take off -- and it is just at the idea/hashing about stage right now -- can always run other stuff as long as it's a) not a one player game and b) requires little or no research or setting design.

Besm D&D game idea

History

For much of its history, this was a D&D world like any other, a smorgasboard of ideas and concepts jumbled together. It is said that the world did make more 'sense', long ago, but there was a war involving dragons and elves that has long since passed into myth, even among dragons. The elves, who live longer, do not speak of it, but for a long, long time -- and even now, to an extent -- the elves and their kin are somewhat feared because racial memory runs deep. It was enough for the elves to be left alone for some time, even when the human kingdom of Osgiliath began to expand and the wizards and warriors devised new methods of making weapons that changed the face of the world.

(OOC: Basically think of an industrial revolution in terms of magic: magical devices are made on assembly lines, regular weapons as well and so forth. After two generations the alliance with the dwarves was struck and 7 generations ago both races ceased selling weapon and metals to anyone else.)

Within 10 measly human generations the entire face of the world has been changed. In the last three the monsters and other races have been domesticated, extinguished or driven into hiding in various dark corners of the world still inaccessible to the armies of man. That these grow fewer with each passing year goes without saying, and yet is still being said. (Can you tell I am writing this on little sleep? I can.)

6 generations, the elven empire in the western continent fell to the humans, as much due to their skill as to overconfidence and decadence of the elves. The humans made an exact replica of Osgiliath there stone by stone and razed the elven city and burned down the fabled trees and forests of the elves. Most of the elves died then, by their own hands. The few who remain are jesters in human courts, or hidden in the wilds of the world, and they have such long, long memories ...

This is not to say the world is entirely human: the dark wood and its like still exist, scattered but real, and the remnants of the mighty orcish armies that once terrified the world still remain in various steppes and plains. Only without weapons the orcs have descended into barbarism and are truly only a threat to each other in this new age. And the dwarves, of course, have the underworld to themselves: and how long this alliance with the humans last is the only deep fracture in the new world they have made.


Summary (as humans count generations, so about 30 years apart*)
10 generations ago: humans Industrialize, begin the march on the world. Osgiliath begins taking over neighbouring kingdoms.
8: Dwarf/human alliance. Metals in exchange for technology.
7: trade of weapons and metals by both races with other ones ends entirely. Arming ones enemies is, after all, unwise. War is essentially declared.
6: the elven kingdom falls, and many monsters flee into hiding, expecting a retaliation from the elves (or their allies) that never comes.
5-4: the mighty orchish armies fall apart without a steady supply of weapons.
3: the monsters have fled into various woods and dark places.
Now: most of the monsters have passed into human myth and legend, which is good for the monsters to a large extent. Only the rangers are liable to recall the precise truth about monsters.

(For humans, living over 60 years is rare, though more common now without monsters. This basically assumes that the entire timeline is about 500 years old, at best.)

* Humans live this long thanks to clerical healing.


Geography
The eastern continent: Home of the empires of man, initially. Now almost entirely settled and broken.
Western: original home of the elves, now mostly conquered; a light in the world gone out.
Northern: Barbarians and ice; mostly conquered by the dwarves more than humans, even above the surface. In exchange, much of the underworld beneath the two cities of Osgiliath are in human hands.
Southern: From whence came the orcs. This is the location of the dark wood and the point at which the campaign begins.


Setting Note

If you want to add stuff in the history about your race and stories about it, let me know and I'll add them to the file.


Campaign

While at first blush things might seem somehow hopeless, much of the human empire is conquered human kingdoms who don't always sit easily under the yoke of Osgiliath. While the empire has been frankly amazing in the arts of war, they have yet to produce civil leaders of equal caliber so local laws and customs can sometimes be odd and exploited by the PCs. As well, your status as 'mythical' begins can give you an edge, to say nothing of pushing human/dwarf relations hard, finding out what kind of plan the elves might have, re-arming the orcs or finding out what the wizards want etc.


The PCs

Given BESM and the anime genre, the PCs are basically made of awesome compared to most of the humans they'll run into. Oh, some have magic, and prayers, and weapons and spells, but the PCs have supernatural abilities beyond anything those small and jealous humans can manage and that shall be both your glory and your doom.

besm D&D Game: basics

Premise: Think lolad, except as monsters set in a D&Desque fantasy setting.

Themes: Survival, The Quest(tm, patent pending), the reservation system

System: BESM 3, 250 points. This game will use the heroic level benchmarks except skills are not necessary: only get what fits the character, if any.

Characters: Build something from the monsters manual in D&D, or even another source entirely. Players are encouraged to make up as detailed a culture as they want to make their 'monsters' as civilized as they wish. (Think of how the old world viewed the new for human attitudes regarding the Pcs.)

Setting: Your Ye Olde Fantasy Worlde. The world has never been named – though the humans are working on that – and used to be pretty generic and normal until the humans perfected hot air balloons and zeppellins and began to travel into lands they couldn't reach. The missionaries of the three-faced God and Goddess plunged into the wilds of the world and innovation after innovation strengthened the human nations until they had continent-wide empires stretching from sea to shining sea. In the past two hundred years the humans have advanced (and bred) ferociously to engulf other lands and progress has never seemed so sweet a mistress.

In their fabled towers, the mighty and awful wizards work magics that keep the empires growing, gathering apprentices to make fabled magical items a step at a time, saving time and energy and equipping the armies of man with weapons to slay even the greatest of monsters. Of these wizards, the most famous are Morinehtar (the darkness-slayer) who destroyed the last of the Great Wyrms with a single word of power and Romestamo the earth-helper, who forged the alliances with the dwarves that benefited both mighty races and cleansed the underworld of many old monsters.

And as above, so below for the dwarves have supplied metals and wondrous smithing to the humans in exchange for the fabled 'industry' of the magicians and applied that to making their own marvels; armed with human magics and their own weapons, they have conquered the lands under the earth as they own. Each mighty empire leaves the other alone, content for now to secure their own dominions.

Which brings up to the Dark Wood that winds through the Everglass Mountains. These were mined dry by the dwarven ancestors centuries past and were refuge for the last of the gnomes before the dwarves destroyed them all. Now they are one of the few blank spots on the map, a place of monsters and the wild that the armies and desires of man have yet to conquer. It is your home, for however long it lasts.


Notes on races:
Elves serve the humans, acting as messengers and court jesters and wonders as the pygmies on earth did for the courts of Europe. There are few of them left, and most believe they can wait out these empires and times and the world will again be theirs. (The extermination of the dark elves under the earth does not bother them, as those were not real elves.)
Gnomes: Extinct, thanks to the dwarves.
Halflings; Someone has to work the mines the humans have, after all. Most are considered just short humans and not a separate race at all.
Half-orc/whatevers: Very rare, all considered monsters.

Notes on classes:
Barbarians: Some exist, though the northern wastes are not very empty any longer. Most are considered scum by the empires and end up in the Dark Wood and places like it to test themselves against the last remnants of the world of their father's stories and the legends of their father's father's, despite knowing their may be none left for them to pass those stories onto. This does not stop them from wishing to hunt and destroy monsters, naturally.
Bards: Next? Seriously they're bards.
Clerics: The followers of the God and Goddess have spread far and wide. While they don't have political power in most lands, they have much popular support and gather many followers to try and 'cure' the monsters and make them human again, or yoke them to the will of humanity like they did the horses, wemics, centaurs and griffins. Unlike other classes, they would rather find a use for monsters than destroy them.
Druids: The druids are the only humans on the side of monsters, if at all, as much as they are on the side of the woods themselves. (Though the woods would be safer and nicer without all those monsters in them.) They tend to be rare and distrusted by all sides but are generally the only humans who will not attack monsters on sight.
Fighters: S.e. Knights are basically fighters in magical armour whose goal is to destroy monsters, and they are very, very good at it.
Monks: Warriors who often protect the clerics, monks are capable of taking down monsters without weapons at all and rely on the strength of the gods and the magic of their prayer to defend themselves. Some of them are not, always, horrible, and they tend to view the world differently from the clerics but are wise enough to keep their views to themselves.
Rangers: Big game hunters. They are often the most dangerous foe of the monster in the woods since they have studied the tracks, habitat and such of monsters.
Rogues: No one trust them. Obviously.
Sorcerer: Those who have made deals with monsters (and worse things) for power. They can be human or monster but serve masters and forced beyond the ken of others. Wizards tend to kill them on sight if given the chance, if only to tidy up the world a little bit.
Wizards: Mighty and scary magicians, often enough, who are the backbone of the human empires. They tend not to interfere directly in the empire and seek other things than mere temporal power.

Monsters:
The ones that exist will depend on the PCs and characters they make.

Dresden Files game

DRESDEN FILES - DETROIT. (No campaign name as yet.)

"And if in the end, there is only darkness? If the world is meant to end in darkness?"
Jilly shook her head. She refused to believe it.
"How can you deny it?" he asked.
"It's just . . . if there's only supposed to be darkness, then why were we given light?"
For a long moment, he sat there, shoulders drooped, staring down at her hands. When he finally looked up, there was something in his eyes that Jilly couldn't read.
"Why indeed?" he said softly.
- Charles de Lint, "The Buffalo Man"

The following is a summary of the initial chats on the city, as I recalled them, and some additional bits and ideas. Nothing of it is set in stone.

Detroit is, in practise, a hell on earth. Half of its population has vanished in 50 years, entire subdivisons are deserted (over 30K empty buildings) and the employment figure is between 25-34% depending upon the source. Half the schools have closed, it's 'ground zero' for education and jobs and essentially an American Mexico City -- this is how bad things can get when they simply keep getting worse.

THEMES

Urban Decay

This is the biggy. The city is falling into the abyss and no one seems able to stop it. Weirdly, the people who seem most willing to stop it are the Canadian government, via Windor .. a city that thrives while its sister city fails. Bail-out money and the like has been offered but to what extent the tide can be held back is an open question.

Things to explore:
* Why has Windor succeeded? Magically, it could somehow he considered to be 'stealing' Detroit's potential. A coven of magicians? I imagine there would be some interesting conspiracy theories about this. Perhaps the area they link to in the Nevernever influences things?
* Twin it with Mordor? :)
* The places it leads to in the Nevernever would be BAD places. And a lot of things can leak through: you have a city with shit police protection, urban jungles gone wild and areas more fitting for the third world than first -- a perfect feeding ground for nasty things, and for finding people desperate enough to make any kind of Pact.
* Some of this can be linked to the demise of the auto industry, leading to a competing theory to the above: magicians hate Industrialization, so they broke Detroit as a warning/lessson to the world. Things have fallen apart, the centre hasn't holded, people in the city are probably more aware of magic ... and scared people make leaps of logic others wouldn't.


Racism

This isn't a theme we've much explored in Game1, but Detroit is almost a poster child for it. The population is 80% black, 20% white (for all intents; other minorities are seriously minor). The average income is ~28K for a family. The math isn't pretty.There's a lot of anger and resentment boiling away that's one wrong word from exploding.

Things to explore:
* The music scene. Seriously, this is Motown and yet most of the famous rappers are white. What the hell? Seriously, what the hell?
* White Court vampires are into Sex and Porn. Black Court vampires have been destroyed by a Book/White Man's Education. The White Court is huge (in most cities), The Black Court is nothing. The parallels would be interesting for people to draw even if they have no real basis in reality.
* The sane folk. The city hasn't fallen apart, and some of that is because people don't blame it on race and so forth and actually talk to each other. While this theme is dark, there's some counterpoints to the urban decay in that the shit has not hit the proverbial fan.

THREATS

Save With Magic

Basically, at least one clued in Wizard willing to break the laws of magic to alter minds and enthrall people to create a better world. It's blatantly ignoring the fact that magic doesn't solve anything as miuch as make things more complicated but a desperate activist watching their hopes for the future crash and burn again is liable to ignore than and try and fix things in any way possible.

Things to explore:
* The domino effect. Lies beget other lies: You make one person Change, and others wonder why, begin to question, and you have to control more minds to stop those questions until it spirals out of control.
* To what extent does/can this work, short term? If it has actual tangible benefit -- short or long term -- then it could be worth it. If one has made the world a better place, then what purpose are the laws of magic actually serving, and whose ends?


GM Thoughts

I don't want this to be Harry Dresden in another city. As such, both the police and the mob are kept in the dark about Weird Shit as much as possible. (An ex-police officer investigating things they shouldn't is fine, ditto with minor criminals trying to make use of magic and such to have it backfire.)

I want the general populace more clued in, at a basic 'weird shit happens' level. Dresdenverse has no Illuminati, no Sleepers or WOD Veil -- and yet magic has, despite being real and powerful, somehow been forgot. Who benefited from this and/or arranged it? Such questions, of course, assume anyone deliberately did. (For my money, the first theory is closer to an in-game truth.)

The Eugenics Theory: The White Council dooms magic. Magic is inherited, and every warlock who dies reduces the amount of potential magicians: the rise of the internet (and people realizing their potential/heritage) has slowed what was becoming an obvious trend, but has not eradicated it: magic became rare because magicians did, and the extermination of warlocks does more than the Inquisition ever did.
The Conspiracy Theory: The Council encouraged science etc. because their magic is better than it (e.x.: electronics -- some 'coincidence') and if kept in a few hands, magic is safer and less dangerous. Letting people become convinced magic wasn't real prevented great harm via magic.


Differences from Dresden Files: The red court have NOT been wiped out; the vampire war ended as a cold war stalemate a while ago.

Also, I'll probably make use of/throw in things from the Nevernever a LOT. It's s fascinating aspect of the setting that is seldom touched on and there's a lot of interesting places to go with it regarding Faerie, Hell, Heaven, God(s) and so forth.


CAMPAIGN

Power level: Starting as Chest-Deep seems viable (8 refresh, 30 skill points, cap at Suberb) seems viable.

Players: Ideally, 3. More or less are possible.

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.

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.

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.