NaGaDeMo: Character Creation Part II

Where to put your points?
Combat
These points are used during combat situations.

Physical
This represents the strength and fitness of the character and is used whenever the she needs to do something physical such as swim, climb, jump, bend bars or hula.

Mental
This represents how smart and mentally strong the character is and gets used whenever she needs to do something cerebral, such as fix a car, decipher a code or play sodoku.

Accouterments
The character’s stuff beyond the game basics.

Tricks
This is where the player starts to have a little fun. Here they can come up with any special abilities, skills or powers. Tricks will be discussed in more detail in Character Creation Part III.

Flops
These are the flaws and defects of the character. Unlike the other categories, Flops add points that can be used elsewhere. Flops will be discussed in more detail in Character Creation Part III.

Maze of the Caliph

A dungeon idea inspired by the "Scooby Doo meets Jeanie" cartoon special.It was decreed that any young Prince who wished to become Caliph must first enter the Pyramid of Kings and remain inside, alone, for a year and a day.

By tradition, each Prince that survived and became Caliph would add their own room or puzzel to the labyrinth, which has resulted in a sprawling complex of corridors, rooms and caverns that now extends far below the pyramid itself.

Inside is a series of traps, puzzels and riddles, each designed to teach the Prince what it is to rule. Some test his endurance, others his skill with a sword, wisdom, intellect, compassion, guile, or of a hundred other qualities deemed important to become a king. But to rule is not easy, and many of the rooms reward failure with death.

Kids in the Hall Saturdays

My neighbour song would probably reference the screaming "NO!" fights the neighbours have with their precocious three year old.

Campaign to have the Muppets Host the Oscars

<a href="Oh, does this need to happen.

Eddie Murphy (probably unwisely) stepped down as this year's Oscar host after his "Tower Heist", wannabe Oscar director, Brett Ratner was "yanked after outing himself as a small minded douche. The best part of this is the growing internet movement to have the Muppets host the Oscars! <

Update: Apparently they hired Billy Crystal again. Not wildly original, but probably a solid choice.

Book Review

My first requested review. First I’d like to apologise to James Hutchings. I should have had this up sooner, but the exploding gallbladder and subsequent misplacement of my e-reader put me behind a bit.

The New Death and Others, by James Hutchings

A New Death and Others is a collection of over sixty short stories and poems. I know what you’re thinking, but the poetry is actually readable. If My Life was Filmed made me laugh out loud and My Cat is Not Like Other Cats might just sum up how everyone feels about their pet. There are some longer pieces, but they read easily and some are based on stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.

As for the stories, the book gets off to a somewhat rocky start. The God of the Poor, is a little heavy handed for my taste, but is otherwise pretty good. The second story called How the Isle of Cats Got its Name, is a little more problematic. It may have been some defect on my part, but I had a lot of difficulty following this story and to be honest, after two readings I’m still not sure how the island actually got its name. Also, whether by accident or inspiration, the story is very similar to the 2010 Oscar nominated animated short, ‘The Cat Piano’.

Fortunately, things pick up quickly and the pace rarely abates. The next two stories are The Enemy Within with its sufficiently creepy take on racism and The End, which puts a nice spin on the current torrent of ‘monsters amongst us’ fiction. From there we plunge headlong into the still fifty plus remaining stories. There are a number of reoccurring topics running through such as the stories such as the Telelee Tales, or the Anthropomorphised Concepts, where Fame, Ambition, Destiny and Love all have a role. But there are still a lot to choose from no matter what your tastes, ranging from the humorous, to the historical, the horrific and the fantastic.

Being a sucker for good world-building, I particularly enjoyed reading about the city of Telelee, which is a reoccurring setting for many of the stories. Sometimes serious, sometimes humours, just a little bizarre, the city felt like a delightful mix of Lankhmar and the Thieves World’s Sanctum, with just a touch of New Crobuzon. I am looking forward to reading more stories from Telelee and seeing how Hutchings develops the world.

If I had to make a complaint it would be that some of the longer stories seem to lose the thread, which can result in the ending feeling rushed, or the story as a whole becoming disjointed. There is always a good idea at the core, but a second pass under the editor’s red pen would have been helped tighten up and focus the story.

That being said, any book with so many stories will have a few that do not appeal to personal tastes and there were a lot more hits than misses. I’ve certainly read much worse from more established authors and I heartily enjoyed the book as a whole. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future brings for Mr. Hutchings.

NaGaDeMo: Overcard

Overcard

As the name implies, the game is loosely based on poker and is designed to be played using Playing Cards, but D20s or D12s can be substituted with only a slight change in the odds. For the cards, Aces are worth 1, while face cards have a numerical value: Jacks are 11, Queens 12 and Kings are worth 13. How Jokers are used will be explained below.

Obviously, these rules only barely scratched the surface with what you can do with the cards. Dealers are encouraged to tinker, fiddle and warp the system in whatever way they see fit. Players are encouraged to do the same in the Extras category (see below).

CHARCTER CREATION
Players start off with 50 points to distribute between five categories: Combat, Mental, Physical, Accouterments and Extras. There is also an optional fifth category called Flaws that may awards extra points. Players MUST put points into Combat, Mental and Physical. Characters that do not allot points for Accouterments start the game only with the most basic of equipment. In a fantasy game this would mean the clothes on their back, enough pennies for a meal or two and a rusty dagger, while in a science fiction game, it might mean the clothes on their back and a pocket zapper with only a small charge left. For Extinction Event, a character with no points in Accoutrements (depending on the viciousness of the Dealer) could easily start the game completely naked.

NaGaDeMo: Extinction Event

The world fifty years from now is not all that different from the world today. The technology is a bit smaller, a bit faster. Corporations have solved a few problems while creating a slew of new ones and governments continue to do less with more. People are still people; saving the whales on one hand, while slaughtering each other in the name of some god on the other. There have been depressions and war, peace and prosperity, fads and flops, heroes and villains, and at least six major reboots of the Batman franchise.

Then came the Comet. No one knows who leaked the information to the press, but in less than two minutes every news feed was broadcasting that the planet was doomed. Then it was discovered that the World Government Organization had known about the Comet for almost five years and a nuclear strike had already been tried and failed, the manned mission was lost with all hands. By the time the general population found it, it was already too late and the human race had less than a month to live.

The Arc Project was revealed; the best and brightest minds with a few lucky lottery winners squirreled away in secret bunkers hidden across the world. Corporations and governments made their own plans, while Doomsday cultists, survivalists, Jehovah Witnesses celebrated. Besides a few helpful pamphlets and a government ration of penicillin and toilet paper, everyone else was on their own.

There were rumours of men in dark uniforms snatching people off the streets, but in the midst of the chaos of the time, now one paid the stories much attention. Neither did you, until the night you woke to find people around your bed and felt the needle enter your neck…

The next thing you remember is the sound of your own heartbeat. The air is cold, ice cold and as your eyes slowly adjust you can see your breath curl into the air and spread out against a pane of frosted glass. There is a hiss of air and your ears pop with the change of pressure. The frosted pane before your eyes swings away, beyond is only darkness…

NaGaDeMo: the Idea

Most dice based RPGs run on some sort of Dice+Modifier system. While the dice provide the probability, the Modifier is determined by the player. This modifier tends to be static which means that games boil down to grinding out enough experience points to raise the Modifier (as a huge simplification).

What has always bothered me was the set modifier. What if somehow you could compensate for a bad roll? Mulling over this problem a few years ago lead me to create a system I called Pocket, but I could never quite get to run the way I hoped. I was using poker rules as a basis (which has since been done much better with Deadlands), but I think I can salvage something by limiting the cards in play and simplifying some of the rules. The decision to continue to use cards rather than dice is practical rather than stylistic; it is simply harder to fake a card value than it is to conveniently nudge a dice roll. There is actually nothing that would prevent a trusting GM from using d12s.

Frank!

Update December 2013.
I originally posted this clip because I was having my gall-bladder removed in a few days. The tests they performed on me for that operation would reveal the 13cm terratoma tumor that was growing in my chest.

Frank saved my life.

Kids in the Hall Saturdays

So my gallbladder decided it was going to claw its ways out of my sternum last Sunday night. Luckily it was aided in its egress by a slightly more competent doctor than this one. It has however, put me rather behind in my NaGaDeMo attempt.