Bamboo Biscotti

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 V...

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.

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 pur...

"The following is a true story. The events described took place on Tatooine, in and around Mos Eisley in the year (redacted). At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.  Out of respect for the deceased, everything else has been told exactly as it occurred." ...because Fargo, Fiasco, Apocalypse World, and Star Wars are like sodium, bleach, ammonia, and dihydrate monoxide...mix very carefully ...

More Uncharted Worlds faction musing today, because outside it is cold and wet and icky and pretty much normal for an Emerald City December. (And an idle thought, even as I glance over AARs for Ed's newest addition to his 5150 sci fi minis gaming line: Two Hour Wargames is to traditional miniatures gaming as Anything PbtA is to traditional tabletop roleplaying.  They're both streamlined, emergent, organic...which may well be why I like both of them so much, as opposed to spending eleven hours to complete nine turns' worth of a Napoleonic meeting engagement.  Some folks like their crunch and their dictionary-thick rulebooks full of painstakingly crafted simulations.  I'm in it for the story, the fun, and the creative vibe.) A couple more factions, following up a bit of table-chat with my regular gaming group last night in lieu of an actual session due to our GM's present holidaze-inspired fatigue and distraction.  UW is not likely to be our next project, but many...

Some days I really feel the need to cut down on the coffee consumption, especially when it results in little plot bunnies like the following.  To understand where my noggin was going with this, we can take the sane route or the full gonzo fanboy moment route...so of course I'm taking the latter. I have a growing desire to put Uncharted Worlds to the test which, right at the beginning of the holiday season, qualifies as extremely poor timing .  At the same time, as is usual, I have a zillion irons in the fire which means that nothing gets my full concentration much, and in turn it means that I tend to mash-up and cross-attach things with ridiculous abandon.  So with that as a little explanation for why this particular bit of whimsy hit so indelicately, I was mulling over Factions whilst on my commute and hit upon a couple of stark visual differences for rival factions.  Not so much in the black hats versus white hats sort of way, since my default is at least four ...

This is a work in progress, initially inspired by the old-school sandbox science fiction role playing game Stars Without Number, published by Sine Nomine.  Some of the material was drawn from Other Dust, also by Sine Nomine.  I've recycled it a few times for various projects, and when the new char-gen stuff for Uncharted Worlds is available I'm probably going to try adapting it more fully for that game as well. Long story short, I'm a furry fan (but not entirely a furvert and definitely not a fursuiter).  This was my attempt to bring Teh Furry into something like SWN...with a little help from the Highshine project detailed in OD.  I also found a way to get anime-style Catgirls into this, just for laughs. I apologize for my truly rotten application of Japanese.  Denizens of Nakano are not hengeyokai, but that's as close as my limited grasp of the language comes to a proper term for them. NAKANO Atmosphere: Breathable Temperature: Temperate Biosphere: Hu...

I owe, I owe, I owe an update to this!  And Aledys is probably sick and tired of being stuck at sea by now. A bit of news, though--I recently backed a thing called Uncharted Worlds, which is  a space opera game that uses Vince Baker's Apocalypse World system.  About five minutes in, I was reminded of one of Ed's many, many projects...and so I'm also now looking over my copy of 5150: Urban Renewal because New Hope City is a perfect setting for something like UW. (Another fifteen microseconds of fame...here I am in the credits along with all the other Kickstarters: (Credit where it's due--my current fanboyish blather about Apocalypse World is at least a little bit due to a fellow named Delos who writes stuff like this:   Ramblings of Jacob and Delos     Just don't ask him about Sin and her tendency to make heads explode!  The special memories of that first game may not yet have faded.) Also, the good folks at Hero Forge have been adding to thei...

More steampunk swashbuckling goodness that Bishrook would have loved to bits.  It's still under development and playtesting, but rest assured that when it IS published, it's joining my library.  (I've got a couple of Mr. Roby's other games, like Full Light Full Steam, and I backed his supplement for Houses of the Blooded, so I admit a certain positive inclination toward his work.) Steampunk has a problem, although the degree to which it impacts your game depends on a number of factors such as which rule-set and setting you are using, the composition of your play group, and whether the GM is prone to pettifoggery on certain historical details.  Namely that the 'default' group is generally European (thus white) and tends to be middle-upper or upper class to one degree or another.  To be fair, there are exceptions!  In my (somewhat limited) experience, that's how things turn out--diversity, should it arise, is more likely in settings where you have Elves and ...