Author: Admin

Interwebs Treasures #16

  • A video from the interwebs – Crit or Miss Special: The Problem with GURPS : not a criticism of GURPS, but a video by a huge fan of GURPS about why he often chooses not to use it. My commentary: I’ve purchased many RPGs over the years. Few have been played more than a few times. D&D. Traveller. Champions (HERO system). GURPS. Those are the systems I’ve used a lot. When I’ve purchased other games that create their own systems for a particular campaign setting, I’ve usually thought the systems sucked, even if the background material was really good. A few exceptions. My friend Bob had this game called Demon: the Fallen, which I looked through and it looked awesome. Technically it was part of the World of Darkness thing, so whatever, maybe it wasn’t entirely it’s own thing. Still, if I see a game system for a cool setting, I think there’s an 80% chance I’d just GURPS it, or use the Hero system.
  • A cool interview with Marc Miller, designer of Traveller.
  • Travellermap.com – mind blown. Zoomable, printable map for Traveller’s Third Imperium setting.
  • Zhodani Base – incredible Traveller site.

Working on Traveller

I intended to spend the night reading, but my eyes are tired and itchy from allergies, so I layed here on the couch with my laptop in my lap and started working on notes for a classic Traveller campaign. Curious how my players will react to a game with no really “leveling” or experience point system! haha.

Interwebs Treasures #15

As usual, a few cool things from the internet.

Working on a session

Finally getting serious about writing up CyberTex Episode 4. I’ve got this nice notebook and a nice pen, and I’ve spend a lot of time noting ideas for this game, so tonight I started typing it up. I’m doing it, once again, in scenes. This may be a much more free-ranging game. A lot less certainty about what actions the PCs will take, which is fine, it just means I’ll have to be thinking a bit faster. This is intended to be a one-session game. I have some encounter scenarios I can drop in when appropriate. They are flexible that way. I’m working on a contingency tree for the game as well — if they do this, then this, but if they do this, then this other thing, etc etc. I’ve used this before and it helps me guide the game a bit without railroading the players. And finally, I’m working on some interesting NPCs to encounter, as well as weaving the character backgrounds into the game. Will probably throw in a few hooks for future games as well. Fun!

Brainstorming New GURPS Campaigns

As I’ve written before, I think GURPS is best suited for somewhat oddball campaign settings. Honestly, I feel like if one want to run a pretty standard fantasy campaign, D&D is fine. If you want a standard supers game, Hero System/Champions is really good (You can do it with GURPS, but the game mechanic in the Hero System of Stun damage vs. Body damage, makes it uniquely suited to supers.) But if you to do something unique, GURPS is the way to go. I cite Victorian Apocalypse as a great example. This guy came up with a really fun and novel game world, and GURPS is very well-suited to realize it in the game.

I am kind of interested in doing an urban fantasy/magic style game. Not sure exactly where to go with it. I started reading the Dresden Files books this week. I’ll read a few of them. The first one was really quite enjoyable. Coming up with a setting like this, the would allow players to modify some of the classic fantasy archetypes into modern versions might be fun. It might also be easier than cyberpunk to give them a continuing motivation to band together.

Back in the 1990s I read George R.R. Martin’s Wildcards series. It’s kind of a “what if supers existed in the real world” kind of thing. Really fun books. There is a GURPS sourcebook that came out back then for this world. I think I’d be interested in running that kind of supers campaign as well. Honestly, I’m really good with the Hero system, and it would be a lot easier for me to use it, but I think the level of realism in the GURPS system lends itself to a better approximation of this kind of world.

I’m also interested in a science fiction/space campaign, but I’m not sure where to go with it. I could see using some of the old Traveller materials like “the Spinward Marches” as a campaign setting. I’m really not interested in the whole space ship building and combat thing. I think I’d rather have people get around via teleportation or some Doctor Who-ish way. I don’t know. Haven’t thought enough about it.

However, I think that CyberTex is going quite well, so I’ll continue developing that campaign as I experiment with ideas for other game worlds.

 

Homebrew Worlds

Reading the blog for the Victorian Apocalypse campaign has been fun. Honestly, I’ve never had any interest in Steampunk as a genre. It’s always seem like more of a fashion movement. I don’t know if I’d say Victorian Apocalypse is straight-up steampunk, but I do like it. The time line (that link) is really well done. I’m always amazed when people can come up with homebrew settings that seem to well-reasoned, creative, and engaging. My friend Bob does that with his Wuxia games. He’s become very knowledgeable about ancient China, and he’s able to weave that knowledge into his campaign. Being a massive Wuxia fan, familiar with all that genre’s characteristics doesn’t hurt either.

From the time I started gaming, it really never occurred to me to run anything but a homebrew world. We bought dungeon modules, but we always just dropped them into our own campaign worlds and modified them as we saw fit. But being  young kids at the time, we didn’t expend a lot of brain cells considering the histories of our worlds. We just tried to create fun dungeons to explore.

Anyway, back to steampunk and stuff like that. Reading that blog has gotten me thinking a lot about my own cyberpunk world, it’s timeline, etc. I’ve been working on a timeline, and damn, coming up with something that doesn’t seem stupid is not easy. There’s some retconning that needs to be done too. There are some technologies that the cyberpunk literature seems not to have fully anticipated. Wireless tech is one of them. The Sprawl Trilogy seems like it largely missed that.  Bladerunner did too. The real game changer is nanotechnology. How far should I let nano go? Because if it goes too far things start getting really weird. Or quantum computing. I may simply have to say that those technologies — nano and quantum – are simply so dangerous to work with that few people are willing to delve into them, and perhaps there’s some super-secret agency that goes around “handling” those problems.

Such are the problems of a person of limited intelligence trying to design a tight homebrew world.

Yesterday I found a copy of GURPS Deadlands: Weird West at a local gaming shop. It’s a very cool setting. I bought it, and read the introductory chapters at lunch. Very well done. I think these kinds of setting books are great. I love seeing how talented writers create a good setting, incorporating real history with all sorts of weirdness and fun. I’ve never wanted to run a full western game. But the notion of weirding it up is really appealing. How about the world of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (already super weird!) with magic and monsters? I like that.

I need another five hours in every day to pursue all this stuff.

First D&D game in many years

I’ve had a standing invitation from members of my GURPS group to join their regularly meeting D&D 5e game for some time. This last week I decided to take them up on it, and joined their group for at least that afternoon. I’d like to play more often. They seem to play about twice a month. I might be able to do once per month. Depends. I have a lot of stuff to do on the weekends, and 6 hours of D&D is a large block of time. Still, I would like to.

I had a great time. I haven’t been involved in D&D since about 1993, when I ran a game for my wife and three others who had never played before. I haven’t played since probably 1984. So it was really enjoyable.

Jeff, our DM, is running the a series of adventures (I still call them “modules”) from the publisher. The group was all at 8th level, so Jeff let me roll up my character at 8th so I wouldn’t just immediately get killed. I rolled up a monk, inspired by the Wuxia RPG campaigns my friend Bob runs. Saturday night I watched this movie to get me in a good frame of mind to play him.

Not being familiar with the new edition, the party, or what exactly was going on in the game, and seeing as how my character is a quiet, thoughtful man, I mostly sat back and let the others do a lot of the decision making. I did however, in-character, remark on the animal-like behavior of some of the underlings the party had with us. Needed to say something judgmental to account for his low charisma score.

So I had a good time.

5e is a fun system. It retains the flavor of D&D while increasing the options for player character class, race, and abilities. Gone are the limitation of class and level based on character race from 1st Edition. It’s a much more open game now, and I think that’s really good. At first glance the player characters seem overpowered, but when you look at the stats and abilities of 5e adversaries you see that game balance is retained.

I’ve owned all the 5e books for a couple of years now, and I have to say they are well-written, well-organized, and very easy to use. My fellow players had some nice playing aids, like spell cards that give quick access to your PCs spellcasting abilities.

One thing I’d kind of forgotten is a what a blood bath a D&D game can be. I wouldn’t characterize this campaign as hack and slash at all, but man, we did a lot of killing. In my GURPS Cyberpunk game, the game centers more on skill use.  Of course, GURPS is a much more lethal system, so it’s harder to stay alive if you fight all the time.

Looking forward to playing again.

Interwebs Treasures #14

It’s been a while since I did an Interwebs Treasures post. So here’s a new one.

GURPS purchases, etc.

Pretty excited about this book. Writing clues/mysteries/etc is tough. Hoping this will have some good advice and techniques to make CyberTex a lot better.

It has been a week of significant financial expenditures with regard to GURPS. Steve Jackson Games has a number of previously out-of-print GURPS 4e books available now via print-on-demand. I took advantage of this to procure the POD softcover books, GURPS Space, GURPS Spaceships, and GURPS Mysteries. I got the Space book directly from Steve Jackson Games. It came with some extra stuff – a few little Munchkin plastic figures and Munchkin cards. The Space book came in last night, and immediately started reading it. The introduction, which just talks about how cool science fiction, as well as its history, is inspirational! I think the plan right now is to play tow or three more sessions of CyberTex, and then try a session or two of Space. So at the rate we play, that will be next year, but that will give me a lot of time to write.

As luck would have it, the announcement of the POD Spaceships book came out a few days after I purchased the PDF. No prob.

Combining this with other recent purchases, and let’s just say I need to run some games.

Speaking of Spaceships, this guy Ronald Stepp posts these incredible drawings on the Google+ Traveller page.  Check them out. Great stuff. Damn, I’ll like to play in one of his games! Besides cool ship drawings, he seem to come up with fantastic ideas for his games.

Oh, I discovered this blog, which chronicles the adventures particularly interesting GURPS campaign setting. Very entertaining. I love it.  Victorian Apocalypse! 

I also reorganized the sidebar of this blog a little, adding a section on my CyberTex campaign. Will start putting player resources in there this weekend.

Well, it is looking like a busy weekend. Aikido on both mornings. Then chill, read, and work on GURPS stuff. Then two or three hours of skateboarding in the evening, and I’ll finish both days by trying to finish season one of The Expanse.

I Hunger for CyberTex

OK, I’m posting a GURPS post again because, theoretically, tomorrow I’ll be on the GURPSday list, and I want something to show up from my feed! So yes, this will be a more rambling post than most on this blog.

Next game, I’ll be killing it in my new Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 tshirt. Yes, I purchased this.

Life is quite busy. The summer involves two overseas skateboarding contests I’m going to (don’t be too impressed — I’ll be in the “Masters” division, and I’ll come in last, but I’ll have a great time), and I’m also supposed to test for black belt in Aikido this summer. Combining the training for that with a very engaging but tiring job, and I’ve not had a lot of time for adventure design.

However, the need to roll the 6-sided dice is upon me. It has been a few months since the last adventures in CyberTex, so over the rest of this month I will without a doubt be writing CyberTex Episode 4.

My recent rereading of William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy has me in the right frame of mind. I have finished the books, and I’m listening to the audiobooks in the car on my drive to work (which is a short drive, so this takes time). I’m halfway through listening to book 2, Count Zero.

For a genre that is extremely dependent on atmosphere and mood, listening to a well-read audio book is a fantastic way to immerse yourself in the author’s vision. Particularly with Gibson, listening to the book after reading it has greatly increased my appreciation for the work and the genre. It’s just cool.

Not sure how many plot elements I will steal and mutate for a CyberTex story arc, but I have purchased a nice little notebook (I’m a notebook nerd) to write down possible game themes, hooks, etc. I’m especially happy with the $5 Japanese Platinum “Preppy” fountain pen I’m using (it was cheaper at the cool Japanese bookstore we found nearby!) It writes a very fine line, and using this cool Japanese artifact makes me feel like I’m doing the “real” books for some black clinic in Chiba City. See? It all fits together.

I wrote a post last night that I felt was a bit too negative, so I have deleted it. I will say this. It had to do with the Steve Jackson Games 2016 Annual Report to Stakeholders, which indicated the struggles of producing hardback GURPS material in a profitable way. There are a number of really great GURPS books that I would LOOOOOVE to have in hardback, that have only been done in PDF thus far. First amongst them, the How to be a GURPS GM, by Mook Wilson. This is very well-written, inspiring, and useful guide to, well…, being a GURPS GM. I think that combining that product with a few other useful items into a nice hardback might be cool. I’m no game business expert. I’m just a player, but I know I’d buy that.

I like sourcebooks and genre books. I’ve purchased a lot of GURPS stuff over the last 2 years. If the book looks like it might be useful at all, or just looks cool, hell, I’ll buy it. I have no interest in running a WWII game, but dammit I’m going to pick up the hardback WWII book at a local gaming store this month. I think GURPS Horror 4e is one of the best things I’ve seen. I bought it, read it, and immediately decided to bring some Lovecraftian horror elements into my Cyberpunk campaign (Yes, I know there’s a CthulhuPunk book for 3e. Let’s just say I “found” it).

But yeah, I’ll pretty much buy any GURPS supplement that is even slightly interesting to me.  I’ll buy old 3e stuff if the material is good. I wonder — are there any interesting current or upcoming popular genres that might make a good GURPS book? A book all about post-apocalyptic stuff? (OK, now I see a whole post-apocalyptic section on the GURPS website. But you get my meaning.)

I will say this. I have thought about running one of our sessions on a Sunday afternoon at Madness Games and Comics, a massive and popular local store that provides lots of tables for folks use. I want to do this just to expose observers to GURPS. Here is a bit a problem. What if they like it, and and to get into it? The hardback Basic books are not available in the store. Are they available to retailers still? I see they can be procured from Warehouse 23. If a little interest was generated locally, could the local store get the books? I would hope so. The basic set needs to always always always be available. Two years ago when I started this, that particular store had both books. Now they have none. So the books did sell. It just took a little while.

Well, whatever. I’m looking forward to writing CyberTex Episode 4. Going to start using more of the Cyberspace Cowboy rules from the 3e book. Should be fun!