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Showing posts from 2016

Katana Jones and the Pocatello Kid, Part One

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Hey, remember I threatened you with fan-fiction?  Here we go--generated by Ed's sci fi pulptastic Future Tales and starring this pretty little grrl in all her ferocious predatory glory. Unfortunately, Hero Forge does not have appropriately "Buck Rogers" options for their miniatures, so she's still more Apocalypse World / the Sprawl than she is Forbidden Planet.  Them's the breaks. Katana Jones Rep 5 SS3 Scavenger Star (Humanoid Alien) (Power 5) Brawler +1d6 in Melee Quick Reflexes +1d6 on In Sight tests (Racial) Laser Pistol Solid Melee Weapon (Up to 5 items) Home: Rural/Salvage Myrna Rep 4 SS3 Exotic Grunt (Humanoid Alien) (Power 2) Pilot (Counts as Rep 5 when piloting Starcraft) Stunning (+2d6 when taking Talk the Talk test vs. affected parties)(Racial) Opening Scene generates thusly:  1d6+5 on the Person or Thing Table is a 9 Find/Rescue Person...5 clues needed to unlock the final scene.  1d6 for specific sort of case...5 means the Victim i

More Fun With HeroForge

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Not Avalon, honest!  This is Katana's namesake.  I'm still playing around with the options...but she's aiming to be more of a 5150 / Uncharted Worlds / Scum and Villainy lass. These three are the 'official' build.  The obvious signature weapon is obvious. Here's alternate pose and with the weapons switched out and a different expression, because while she plays a LOT more roughly than Avalon ever did, she doesn't seem to be an Angry Grrl.  Just sort of kittenishly predatory with great enthusiasm.  Katana of the Burn Flats, maybe.  She'd fit into the Kawaii Konekoclypse nicely. And here's a variant for Future Tales--Katana, Princess of Planet X!  I'd have used an energy sword or something but Hero Forge doesn't have one as an option.  Cutoffs would probably be better than the studded jeans, too. "You call me PRINCESS Cheesecake, you goob!" A closeup of the 'mischievous me' expression, a

A Couple of (Longwinded) Thoughts

Apropos of nothing and in no particular order... = = = = = Of all the kerfuffles in the hobby right now, there are two that make less than no sense to me.  There's the rather curious bulldada about inclusion (read: having people of color in illustrations and women wearing something that isn't bikini battle armor) that leaves me scratching my noggin, touched on in earlier posts now and again.  Of late, this has been joined by some odd feud between OSR and 'story' gaming, which is really odd...and over which I have ceased following certain people simply because the rhetoric employed got a bit too excessive. Let me sum up.  I am very fond of OSR.  It's part nostalgia, since if you tell me that a game has 6 stats generated by rolling 3d6 for each, uses a d20 to hit, and has Armor Class involved, I have a fair idea of how this is gonna play out.  There's something comforting in knowing that I can enjoy this without having to dedicate what free time I have to le

Yet Another Reskinning

On a gaming forum I frequent, someone decided to do a freeform Zootopia sandbox game.  No worries there, but...well, once some of the other characters were posted, I found myself coming up with Story and Role combinations for them.  It being the height of Bad Form to post another game on that particular forum built around the same general lines as that first one, I've held off even though our original GM has vanished.  (The game is doing just fine, by the by, in the hands of the co-GM.) So right now, this is one of those semi-hacks that I wanna run if time ever permits! ZOOTOPIA '77 Basically just straight Spirit of 77 with an all Furry cast: because the visual of a jive-fluent Tiger in a white leisure suit and an Afro boogieing on down to the disco on a Saturday night amuses me.  Khan!  Just talkin' about the Tiger.  Can you dig it? If you must, imagine Zootopia as written and directed by the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and Guy Ritchie.  Now crank it up to el

A Tale of Two Frameworks

This is one of those facepalming moments of D'OH! that happens to me every other day or so.  The circuits go 'click', the proverbial light bulb flickers on, and I'm left going "oh! So that's why..." I am a big, big fan of Vince Baker's Apocalypse World system.  I'm also a big, big fan of Ed Texeira's Chain Reaction family of miniature wargames.  And it finally occurred to me that they have one interesting feature in common...independently derived, and not entirely identical, but surprisingly close. They also have a certain tone in common, being fairly narrativist in feel.  (I know, I know, 'how do you write a narrativist wargame'?  Ed's done it. Trust me on this.)  They achieve this by abstracting a whole lotta stuff that most of the gaming industry tries to define to a fare-thee-well and seventeen decimal places, letting you focus on the important stuff*.  This is more apparent in the 'light RPGs' that Ed has publishe

7th Sea...Second Edition, First Impressions

Certes, I am remiss!  Grand Master Wick's newest contribution may be found through the following link: http://drivethrurpg.com/product/185462/7th-Sea-Core-Rulebook-Second-Edition And now, for a few notes and observations (with the customary caveat that your furlongs per fortnight will vary).  As usual, I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers in the process. 1.  This edition is less crunchy and more 'narrativist' than the previous edition.  Personally, I kind of like the new mechanics, as they will be somewhat easier to teach to my Cub.  (If she can handle cribbage, she can handle this!)  Character generation is much simpler and faster, and odds are you'll have something in the ballpark of what you want to do without having to compromise too badly (unless what you want is something decidedly off-genre and odd).  Villains are much simpler to stat and bring into play.  Ships are more abstracted than 1st Ed but no less dramatic.  Improvement is now on a story-based

Back to the Drawing Board: By Savvy and Steel!

As you can see, the piratical project is kind of sort of a little teensy bit stalled...but since I have a semipermanent jones for swashbuckling, it's difficult for me to stay in withdrawal.  At the moment, thanks to the 7th Sea Second Edition kickstarter, I have all the first edition PDFs on my hard drive which of course puts me in mind of By Savvy and Steel!  Being, as I am, more of a musketeer than a pirate at heart, it's time to grab Ed's answer to Dumas and go to town.  So, at the risk of copypasta out of the rules, here's how I build my new alter ego. Your character is a Star ...always a Star, unless you're playing a one-off skirmish game instead.  This gives a few automatic abilities, which basically boil down to their having a bit of script immunity and more free will in the face of stress (ie for some Reaction Tests).  These are: Star Power Larger Than Life Cheating Death Free Will Choose his Reputation .  This ranges from a maximum of 6 to

A Few Notes

No Thank You Evil My deluxe copy of No Thank You, Evil! arrived Monday evening.  Tomorrow we're going to give this baby a proper try-out under fire now that we've all the bells and whistles to go with it.  One of her cousins, who is a terrifically talented budding artist, has been asked to draw my Cub's character for her as well if and when we can ever get together and get the kids around a table for about an hour so Unca Harry can show 'em how this works.  Better yet, she's got a couple of friends who may well be willing to join in! Spaaaaace Opera Alas, the Black Box Traveler game hit a snag and so my space opera jones is roaring back in full force at about the same time I'm hoping to free up time to playtest another fine historical hack of Apocalypse World by the clever, talented, and patient D. Pignedoli, whose City of Judas I also tested. Can't tell you what this one's about just yet, but it's pretty awesome.  Like Wield, though, it's

I say, old chap...

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Plot Bunny Number 5013a

Too many games, too many ideas, too few players, not nearly enough time. (ahem) While my aforementioned jones for Uncharted Worlds is likely to be getting satisfied by a certain black-box game of Traveler, I still have plot bunnies that sink their nasty, sharp, pointy fangs into my sensorium and refuse to turn loose.  Here is today's entry, which is the official posting of something that's been running amok like an over-caffeinated anthropomorphic little Raccoon kid with a super-soaker and easily embarrassed older siblings. An all-catgirl reskin of something Firefly-ish with a dash of Flash Gordon and Barsoom...as written by Rumiko Takahashi and directed by Nabeshin and Ralph Bakshi. Blasters, cutlasses, battle-bikinis, and a hint of fanservice along with incredible special effects and the occasional planet being destroyed by accident. Yes, this is probably sillier than most UW games would be.  That's how I roll.

Crossovers for Fun and Profit!

As some of the folks with whom I correspond on certain online gaming forums are only too well aware, I have a major jones for trying out Uncharted Worlds.  However, I'm also fond of certain OSR material, so when someone I shan't name (to protect his reputation) posted an ad for an old black-box Traveler game, I jumped at the chance. It's been a very, very long time since I had any chance to put my copy of Trav to any use, so I hauled it out and started rolling dice, and as often happens found more inspiration than I expected!  So for your amusement, I present two versions of Dame Lieutenant Commander Marguerite Francesca Krakeni . There are two versions because along with my tendencies toward low plagiarism (see previous posts), I also tend to recycle character concepts that I find enjoyable and interesting.  At the moment, only the Traveler version is going to be in play. TRAVELER STATS 4873BB  Age 34  4 Terms  45000Cr (before equipment purchased)  Navigation-2