Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Top Games

Dice Bomb by ~j-burgess
Gnome Stew's and Frothsof's mention of the Top Seven meme got me thinking about my Top Seven's.  FAvorites are one thing, but ones I have actually played are another - and as a mostly DM, the playing list is of more interest.  I've stuck my toes in a lot of rpg pies since 1981, but where have I double dipped the most?  It's hard to quantify - I'll just have to guess.  I really just haven't played with very much consistency.

The Top Seven RPGs I've Played
  1. D&D 4e
  2. AD&D
  3. Champions 4e
  4. AD&D 2e
  5. Holmes D&D (or Molday Basic - they kind of blur)
  6. Gama World 1e
  7. Shadowrun (maybe tied with Risus)

That one in first place is kind of odd, but I guess it is true. I blame my participation in the RPGA for that. ;p

GMing is much easier, since I do it a lot more:

The Top Seven RPGs I've Run
  1. AD&D
  2. RoleMaster
  3. D&D 4e
  4. Stars Without Number
  5. GURPS Space
  6. Twilight: 2000
  7. Fantasy HERO

Funny how this doesn't represent what my Top Seven Favorites are. :)

- Ark




Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Doctor Who in the Desert

I tend to get strange emails from all over the place referencing the blog.  Typically, it's people wanting me to review stuff - which I don't do because I am lazy - or people wanting me to buy male enhancement products - which I don't do because I am lazy.

Recently, I received a message about my post Doctor Who in Arabic from Jon at BroaDWcast, asking about the doctor Who shows I watched back when I lived in Saudi Arabia.  The site is a guide to foreign airdates and worldwide transmissions of Doctor Who.

Odd, yeah?

Well, turns out they have a heap of information there about when and where the good Doctor has been broadcast around the word over the last umpty-ump decades.  A lot.  I think part of it has to do with a search for the lost Doctor Who episodes.  A while back, BBC deleted a heck of a lot of archival material - which included many old episodes.  There is a hope that may someone, somewhere, stashed some tapes in a cupboard or something.

Anyway, Jon took my vague memories, tracked them back to a particular television station out of Qatar, and even had an episode list of what I most likely saw.  FROM 1978 and 1979.  WOW.

I do hope I gave him helpful information as well.  The episodes were in black and white, dubbed over in Arabic, and subbed in English, which was weird - so who knows, maybe that will be useful? :)

Anyway, it was pretty fun exercise - and help me straighten out some fuzzy memories.

So let this be a lesson - if you have any odd things you've done or strange memories that no one else has - jot them down in a blog post.  You never know when or how they might be useful.

- Ark

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Gamer Gifts


Last year, I got the the gaming crew each a copy of the Swords and Wizardry Whitebox Rules.  That went over well, with it actually being used to spread the gospel of the OSR to uninitiated gamers.

This year, I didn't have so much money - especially since the regular gaming crew is up to ten people now.  So I went the less expensive route of hand crafting some presents.

I made hand painted dice and handed them out in tonight's gaming session.


These are Redshirt Dice.  See the little red shirts?  The Star Trek Emblem is a six.  The red shirt is a one.  Each player got a pair, so when they roll double red shirts, they fail their skill check hard.  Yay!

Adelaide made some awesome dice bags for us too.  Everyone got a very different type.  I didn't get a photo of them all, but I got a picture of the most important one - mine.  I have named it THE SPACE BAG.


It is sooo big, I can fit a sixteenth of my dice in it.  It's perfect for the Redshirts game. :)

-Ark

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Florence and the TPK

DCCRPG Funnel in Action

We had our second DCC game on Saturday.  If you'll remember, I had an arrangement with the our DM in which I was playing a gaggle of potential initiates into a witch's coven - the survivor being granted membership into that select group.

Well, good old Florence had leveled up from Zero to One in the middle of the dungeon, and by the grace of another unlucky party member with a grimoire, learned all of her 1st level spells while stumbling around in the dark reading it.  Somewhere she had found a Vampirella outfit, and the rest was history.

After the dungeon, Florence had some questions for the witch's coven in town.  I was most interested in the immortal entity that was sealed up in the dungeon, and if it would make a good patron.

Come to find out, the witch's coven was just a bunch of emo goth girls who knew nothing about magic.

Yeah.

They were completely freaked that Florence could now light cigarettes without a lighter, kill people with a cloud of red gas, and rip herself into 7 ultra-dimensional copies at will.  So, Florence decided that she would become the new coven leader, and with the help of Bob the Butcher (he co-party demonic cleric,) taught the coven nonsensical and  embarrassing rituals involving running around naked in a corn field during the equinoxes and solstices and that to retain their imaginary witchcraft power that they had to remain virgins forever and ever.

Okay, yeah, that one is going to come back and haunt me - but is was hilarious.

After shaking down the mayor of the town for everything he had, the party left.  Florence grabbed one of the coven members, a beggar girl named Clarissa, to be her personal lackey.  I mean, retainer.  Adminstrative assistant.  Um . . . horse watcher.

So,   the party made their way across country, following Bob the Butcher, who was following a black ram with red glowing eyes, who was being led by his demonic deity, to somewhere where Bob had to do something.  You know - standard adventure.  Will the Ranger, Kyrus the Smack-downer, and Florence the Well-Groomed were just along for the ride.

After a dungeon crawl where I'm sure the party pissed off every underground faction possible, including any potential allies, things came to a head in a room with a glowing electrical ball on a pedestal and a vast amount of angry hooded mages.

We were having our assess handed to us as the hooded goons broke though our lines and began dealing heavy damage.  I was sure the electric ball was important.  I suggested to the Boy that he pick it up and throw it at the mages.

Even if it did no damage, well, it should have been good for some battlefield chaos.

The Boy had Will the Ranger pick it up.  Well . .  that is not exactly what happened.  Will touched the electric ball and he turned to dust.

Yeah.  Oops.

I kept on blowing Florence's spell casting rolls.  That's harsh in DCC.  One success would have turned the battle, but nope.  It was not going to happen.  Bob was knocked to 0 hp, leaving Florence, Kyrus, and a room full of hooded goons.

So, Florence did the math - screeched - and fell down on the floor in her finest imitation of a possum.  Kyrus then was knocked down to zero and went splat.

Florence remained motionless while the hooded cultists moved all of the bodies (and charred dust) to an altar called the 'Altar of Life,' or somesuch thing.  There were dead bodies in voting booths and it got kind of confusing, but Florence slunk off of the altar before the bolts hit here dead friends and somehow moved their minds into the minds of the dead bodies in voting booths.

In the confusion, she hastily donned an ornamental hood and tried to blend in with everyone.  I got a distinct Sandahl Bergman sneaking into the Serpent Temple vibe.  But that's about where we left off - with everyone else rolling up new characters - new stats, new professions, new bodies - everything - but the same names and memories.

So, it was a TPK - minus one. Sort of.   Maybe Florence pretended to be dead well enough to appease the Gods of Death.  Maybe?  Just a little?  Pleeeeeaaasse?

:)

- Ark

Friday, December 7, 2012

Redshirt: Dressed to Kill

Petty Officer 2nd Class Owlicious
This week's Stars Without Number adventure took the scouts their old stomping grounds, the 1950s planet of Tunguska.  They were just on a refueling mission, but they happened to notice a very high tech ship on the surface, and went off to investigate.

Crazy-Ass Tim and Adelaide's record of the adventure is at From the Ashes.  I recommend reading it, since it's good, and I won't be going over the particulars here.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

While I'm waiting, I'll point out the picture to the left.  The party was invited to a fancy dinner during the adventure.  Adelaide found a dress she wanted her character to wear online, so had the ship's clothes printer spit it out.  The original dress is over on Crazy-Ass Tim's page, so go over there if you haven't done so.  This is just my attempt at drawing a truly stunning dress.

Actually, all of the players went found clothes on their phones or laptops.  No, I don't have one of those phones.  I am happy with my decision to NOT have one of those phones.  But you know, it certainly adds an amazing dynamic to a tabletop game.

During the game, Adelaide even went and dug up pictures of what she thought the high tech spaceship looked like.  Heck.  They were perfect.  And while taking a gander, I saw a name on the web page that was sooo much better than the name I had created for the main NPC, that I changed it then and there.

Now, we've used people's phones to pull up a name we couldn't remember, or a picture of something I'm describing that someone just can't quite get.  but it does seem to be growing into a bigger part of our lives, even around my table, a place which normally has had, at it's height, a mechanical pencil for its technological apex.

The use of gaming technology on Wednesday culminated in a completely spontaneous full length  Bollywood dance routine by Crazy-Ass Tim's character Dr. Ramapudi and a blonde administrative assistant named Yvonne that he had become smitten with - including a dance track on the laptop and holographic backup dancers in the star ship.

It reminded my a heck of a lot of the Bollywood movie Marigold.  Yes, you probably don't have enough Bollywood in your life.  Marigold is a fine entry point for the uninitiated to start.

I'm still reeling from the fact that in my gritty, character chewing  horror show of a sci-fi game that a romantic music and dance production spring up out of thin air.  But really, I guess I shouldn't expect anything less. :)

I don't have to do anything to keep them amused at all.  In fact, they amuse me far more.

- Ark

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Redshirts Christmas


After last night's Redshirts game, I was wondering exactly what time it was.  In the game, I mean.  We've had nine sessions in two months, and I was estimating that it had been about a year in game.  Looking at my notes, and slapping them into excel, I saw that I was wrong.  It has only been ten months.  In fact, the crew of frozen Popsicles was due to be back at their base on Christmas Eve.

Now, I've done holidays inside of RPGs before.  My favorite has usually been Halloween in D&D.  That's no-brainer right there, especially if you use zombies.

Heh.

I don't think I've ever done Christmas in Space before, though, and definitely not in Stars Without Number.  I'm not exactly sure what I should do.  Something horrific, of course.  Cthulhu Claus.  Yeah.  I like the sound of that.  Well, maybe that wouldn't the the best Christmas present for the players, but it would be one heck of a present for me.  Ho ho ho.

I supposed, at the very least, the characters should exchange gifts.  I'll let them mull that over in their minds. Great - not only do they need to really go shopping, they have to go virtually shopping as well! ;)

So has anyone else put Christmas into their games?  Anything good come out of it?  Anything horrible?

Here is the timeline, for what it is worth:

2/2/3200 The Reprieve blasts out of Perimeter Station Nine.
2/7/3200 Arrival at Three Sisters system.
2/9/3200 Exploration of the Biotonics Ark 3 begins.
2/15/3200 Arrival at Ukraine system.
2/19/3200 Alpha Team captures a Ukrainian Patrol Boat.
2/25/3200 Escape to Three Sisters system.
2/28/3200 Beginning of the construction of Beachhead Base.
6/11/3200 Completion of Beachhead Base.
6/28/3200 Arrival at Banyan system.
7/1/3200 Alpha Team delivers gun printer to the Brambles.
7/2/3200 Lifter pyramid explored.
8/2/3200 Arrival at Tunguska system.
8/3/3200 Submerged Jump Portal discovered in ocean.
9/4/3200 Ship building activities complete.
10/3/3200 Arrival at Thomas Jefferson.
10/4/3200 Alpha Team encounters Warchou and Berserkers.
10/24/3200 The court-martial and execution of Lt. O'Brien.
11/21/3200 Arrival at Levant system.
11/24/3200 Alpha Team acquires the Molten Rain.
12/8/3200 Refueling stop at Tunguska reveals mystery ship.
12/9/3200 Alpha Team meets Charles Shuttleworth.
12/24/3200 Arrival at Beachhead Base on Christmas Eve.

Ho ho ho!

- Ark

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Void Quadrant

Klikbikken
For those keeping track of the Redshirts Stars Without Number campaign at home, here is a handy-dandy star map to let you know from which direction the next horrible mutant plague of xenophobic xenomorphs will come from and kill all of the PCs.

Hmm, I might have given away too much with that sentence. :)

- Ark

PS

Oh yes, a key . . .

Black - Explored Space (inasmuch as space can be explored in SWN)
Purple - 'Hunch' Space (big bags of guesses from old charts, here-say, and psychic divination)
Dark Blue - The righteous Aquila Union
Orange - The Ptolemy Wilds, controlled by the Alliance of Independent Systems
Red - The foul fungal Skorpios Empire
White - The El Dorado Archipelago, a sort of close cluster in the El Dorado Sector
Yellow - A horrible, horrible place filled with genocidal machines and dog-bear things with horns.
Light Blue - The New Mandate, a place quite unknown to the PCs, that sounds pretty well organized.

Okay, that's about it.

- Ark :)