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Showing posts from 2018

Tales of the Space Princess - AP Report: Space Port Hassle

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Starship Yesterday I finally got around to running a session of John Stater's Tales of the Space Princess for my wife, daughter (10) and son (8). Although my son lost interest about a third of the way through (sitting still was not going well), in other regards it was probably among the best games I'd ever run. My wife laughed probably the hardest I've heard in a quite awhile. Player characters had been generated months in advance.  They included: Chedna   a Human Psychic (Wife) Star Llama a Llamoid Alien Scoundrel (Daughter) Fire the Freeze or Freeze the Fire  a sentient,  chair-sized,  burning block of ice, also a Star Warrior (Son) The scenario itself was created as an afterthought to a pirate base raid adventure I'd written notes for earlier.  But after detailing how the pirate scenario would run, I realized it might be best to have an earlier scenario to establish some key setting details and background. 

Space Opera RPGs - Compiled List

Due to discussion on a recent G+ thread , I felt a compulsion to wrack my brains and hard drive to piece together a list of every "Space Opera" role-playing game I could think of. Whether or not many folks find it useful in the long run, I feel some lingering urge has been exorcised through the process. Games indicated here tend to include one or more of the following elements: Significant part of the action takes place in space. Regular interstellar travel aboard space ships is a key feature. Travel, politics, exploration, war, and/or trade between different planets a key feature. Aliens play a significant part. Link to the list itself follows: Space Opera RPGs List

Full Parsec Five - A Minimal d6 / Miso-Six setting

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Awhile back now, Ann (of DIY & Dragons ) and I were chatting about Traveller RPG character creation, specifically the fact that players can roll a result that ends in character death during creation. Traditionally, at that point one starts the character creation process over again. But what if, we speculated, you did not start with a new living character?  What if rolling death merely changed the focus of the game? A series of adventures with undead astronauts in a dark secondary universe took place? We were both intrigued by the idea, but (to me at least) it seemed like the sort of thing that could take a lot of work and an entire setting to flesh out. And, at the time, due to other commitments, didn't find much time to pursue it further. But every now and then I'd jot down a couple notes about the sort of elements one might find in such a basement-universe setting. The results gradually became influenced probably less by Traveller and more other favorite space o

Orcs, Evil, etc. (Part 2)

(continued from Part 1 ) . . . but that was Tolkien's world. There does seem a strong trend in the current era of trying to humanize the Other. In a lot of senses I think this is a good impulse. I suspect that viewing other living creatures (and people in particular) as having more than just a material value, makes one take a greater interest in creating and maintaining beneficial institutions. Empathizing with those not like oneself and feeling some bond of fellowship is both important in society and provides interesting narrative opportunities. In the real world I feel we need to love and respect other humans, even treat animals well. But I always feel a little cautious about ascribing such human traits to non-humans.  In the real world I think many folks make a distinction: Human: Intelligent. Capable of culture, self-reflection, empathy and caring. Is inherently worthy of some measure of respect. Animal: Less intelligent. Culture? Self-reflection? Empathy? Maybe wo

Orcs, Evil, etc. (Part 1)

Emmy Allen's posting about Orcs, Violence and Evil , got me thinking about this issue again. So the following is probably less a response, and more a bunch of rambling thoughts inspired by it. Also, though I've read Lord of the Rings again recently, her Tolkien lore rating (and your own, dear reader) may be higher than mine, so with a grain of salt: Big "E" Evil as Emmy's post characterizes it is a rare thing innate to certain alien non-person entities: a monomania or existential necessity for specific innately destructive or corrupting concepts, similar to other beings of alien mindset or more akin to elemental forces. I find this idea interesting, and have enjoyed stories where this was the case in the past. But reading the post gave me an urge to do a more in-depth compare and contrast of the idea against how evil and personhood appear in the Lord of the Rings trilogy itself. Few of the powerful supernatural beings in LotR quite start out as monomaniacal

Fiat Diceless Roleplaying

Back in 2008 and 2012 I made a couple attempts to write an RPG system that was diceless, using a system of common sense gamemaster rulings which could be influenced by the expending tokens or accepting consequences. The system is a bit more storygame-ish than I've come to prefer over the years, and it's never been playtested. But on the offhand chance that some of the ideas might be useful to anyone out there, what exists of it is presented below: Fiat Roleplaying Compact (v1.8) - PDF - DOC Fiat Lux (v1) - PDF - DOC

Miso-Six System

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Folks've recently been putting out a bunch of games based on Norbert G. Matausch's Minimal d6 system. Systems this cool and minimal are essentially an addiction for me. But of course I couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to take a shot at my own hack of the thing: Miso-Six - Template ( docx ) Miso-Six - PocketMod Booklet ( pdf ) Miso-Six is based as much on Sophia Brandt's Miniso1d6 as on Minimal d6 itself. But should retain rough compatibility with all similar systems. Thanks also should go out to the creators of the PocketMod creation tool for their handy little application. Coming soon: Setting booklets for the same.

Starlight: Iron Age OSR - Humors & Bloodletting

After playtesting and tweaking Infravision a few months back, the game finally seemed to be working as quickly and smoothly as I'd hoped. So of course gamer ADD kicked in and I had to do something else.  And over the holidays I got the urge to run a mildly  less kitchen-sink game set in the historical Iron Age: Romans adventurers, Mesopotamian artifacts, that sort of thing. Well, the bones of Infravision seemed a satisfying place to start for another OSR type game, even if a lot of the implied setting details didn't make sense. The result has been Starlight . Still a work in progress, under periodic revision, but satisfying to my heart as a marginally less gonzo way to throw together a quick, ancient historic game. Tonight's addition, a couple new skills to replace or supplement magical healing: Humoric Medicine – Balance the body’s vital fluids. One attempt may be made per combat or other instance of injury. On a success the subject gains hp. Failure loses