I normally ask for RPGs that I intend on playing at some point. I think I've just given up and, this time around, asked for games that I want, but would never buy since I don't think I'll ever get around to playing them.
This year, I received Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, and Mongoose's Traveller: Core Rule Book.
Over the years, I think I've probably played five percent of the RPGs I've own. That's a wild guess, but it seems about right. It used to be finding players was the biggest issue. Now the issue is time. Life is funny.
Traveller was one of those games I that I was super excited about when I discovered it in 1981 - soon after my discoverer of Dungeons and Dragons. I ran a few adventures, but the players were far more interested in fantasy, and I think my ability to pull of sci-fi wasn't as great at the time. My attempts later with Star Frontiers were a much bigger hit.
That didn't stop me from continuing to buy Traveller, Traveller: 2300, MegaTraveller, and Traveller: New Era products. I'd sit around and make characters, design starships, and populate stellar subsectors. All my copies disappeared in various moves and book cullings over the years. Then I found Stars Without Number, which has been filling my sci-fi RPG void very well.
Except . . . SWN is extremely abstract about a lot of things, including world creation and starship building - two of my favorite parts of Traveller. During play, the abstract system is wonderful for creating scenarios and having a great ship battle in a short amount of time. But when I'm sitting around, thinking about potential scenario or trying to get a fix on what a shuttle actually looks like and how combat would flow inside, I reach for the detail of Traveller - which just isn't there.
Of course, I make it up as I go along and everything is okay. But sometime I just want some structure - and Traveller was all about structure. I picked up a battered copy of the MegaTraveller Referee's Guide to try to stitch ship building in - but it just wasn't flowing well. This Mongoose edition of the game, while similar, appears to be a much better match.
Reading through the Traveller book has been great fun. It's very much like Classic, with adjustments that I really like. I've sat down and made some characters even. It's great for that. Actually, I think this version is the best organized I've seen to date. It makes me even want to run the game. The big issue for me - the kicker - is lack of advancement. While I don't really care - DMing advancing or static characters doesn't seem to be a problem - I think the players would mind. They are so . . . accustomed . . . to gaining levels an/or skills that static characters would probably freak them the hell out and bore them - or frustrate them - to tears.
But part of me says that they maybe NEED that. Traveller is supposed to take away a big part of meta-gaming by focusing the players on what their character are doing NOW, as opposed to how they should shuffle points or prepare for the next level and worry about that upcoming HP roll. It gives them a character - one they didn't exactly expect - and says PLAY THIS NOW!
I'd like to see that in action one day in a longer campaign. How would it change the player's attitudes? Oh well. I don't see it happening. But I will be stealing the ship stuff and grafting it into my SWN game - assuming that I have the LEET SKILLS to do so.
Okay, I've probably talked enough about Traveller. Now, on to Doctor Who!
I was surprised as hell when I got Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. It's a box. It's a heavy box. Heavy. It's crammed packed with shit. Pretty shit.
There is a quick start guide, a player's book, referee's book, adventure book, and all sorts of extra thick card-stock character sheets, punch-out equipment cards, and little XP token things. Oh, and there are these awesome Doctor Who dice. Everything is nice and colorful and very pretty.
Okay, I thought, nice try, guys. You spat out a pretty looking game designed by the BBC marketing department to increase the reach of the Doctor Who 'brand.'
Then I began to dig into the books, and was surprised there there looks to be an actual game here - a game designed by people who might know what they are doing.
In the beginning of the players book, it tells a story about Rory - one of the characters (well, WAS one,) of the TV show. The little story involves huge and strange shaped objects going missing all over the universe, and the TARDIS crew trying to track them down. The shapes were odd - tetrahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, icosahedrons, an the like. Turns out a race of giants was stealing these huge objects to play a role playing game.
Okay, yeah, it was stupid. Doctor Who is often stupid. But it's stupid for a reason, and if you just lay back and relax and go with it, the stupid turns into cool. And that was cool. Like bow-ties and fezzes. And that little story was a nod back in time to the beginning, to Dungeons & Dragons. The game doesn't even use all those dice. It just uses the d6. But they chose to mention the dice anyway. And that tells me that the designers are MY KIND OF PEOPLE.
I have a lot more to read, but the base game appears very cool. You can make whichever character you like - a rival Timelord or a street sweeper or Goldie Hawn circa 1968. The mechanics are basically a 2d6 point by system, like Traveller made love to Champions-lite or something. It's simple, with various levels of success or failure. Nothing innovative here - just comfortable.
Actually, the box, the books, the feel . . . it's all comfortable. Opening it gave me a similar feel to that of opening the old D&D box way back in 1981 - except full color and glossy. Interesting. I think they did that on purpose. AND, this thing is currently cheaper that the Traveller book on Amazon. Go figure.
Regretfully, I doubt I'll ever find enough people interested in playing it in person. Even The Boy is all MEH about Doctor Who these days. He never got over the change from #10 to #11.
So I'm really happy with my Christmas presents. Maybe I should just make some characters, pull out the Mythic Game Master Emulator, and play these in the wee hours of the night.
- Ark
Friday, December 28, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Stars Without Number Meat Funnel
It the Redshirts Stars Without Number game, I've been dropping hints and foreshadowing an ancient, hidden menace upon a blacked planet blasted by three novas and bathed in the radiation of their rapidly spinning pulsar remnants.
The players have, understandably, been somewhat reluctant to go take a visit.
I'm not sure who came up with the idea. Perhaps it was Merwyn. Perhaps it was me. But whoever had the idea - it was awesome. Simply turn the adventure into a Stars Without Number/DCCRPG Funnel Mashup.
Ca-Ching! Done!
Welcome to the universe of zero level Stars Without Number characters. They have no class. They have d4 for hit points. They only have 4 skills and three pieces of equipment. And you can't decide on any of it!
I'll be running this next week. I don't think that all nine of our players will show up for this, but if they did, that would be 9x4=36 ponential corpses to be ripped to shreds in a horrific feeding frenzy of character death.
So, here are the character creation steps:
Occupation Table
Skills Table
The players have, understandably, been somewhat reluctant to go take a visit.
I'm not sure who came up with the idea. Perhaps it was Merwyn. Perhaps it was me. But whoever had the idea - it was awesome. Simply turn the adventure into a Stars Without Number/DCCRPG Funnel Mashup.
Ca-Ching! Done!
Welcome to the universe of zero level Stars Without Number characters. They have no class. They have d4 for hit points. They only have 4 skills and three pieces of equipment. And you can't decide on any of it!
I'll be running this next week. I don't think that all nine of our players will show up for this, but if they did, that would be 9x4=36 ponential corpses to be ripped to shreds in a horrific feeding frenzy of character death.
So, here are the character creation steps:
- Create up to 4 characters.
- Roll 3d6 straight for: STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON and CHA. Note Ability mods as normal.
- No Class, prime attributes, attack bonus, or special class ability.
- Roll Hit points - 1d4 plus CON bonus.
- All saves are at 17.
- Roll 2d10 once to determine Occupation, Skills, and Equipment. See tables below. Skills provide a ZERO level and equipment is AS-IS, no trades. Additional ammo available from corpses of fallen comrades. Stop whining. You are here to die. Quickly.
- Write it all down on the handy dandy sheet (provided below.)
- Poof! You are done.
- If a character survives, she/he may be upgraded to 1st level and enter the regular campaign.
Occupation Table
| Roll | Occupation |
| 2 | Priest |
| 3 | Journalist |
| 4 | Mechanic |
| 5 | Corporate Suit |
| 6 | Astrophysicist |
| 7 | Field Researcher |
| 8 | Planetary Scientist |
| 9 | Xenobiologist |
| 10 | Xenoarchaeologist |
| 11 | Infantry |
| 12 | Scout |
| 13 | Security Analyst |
| 14 | Medic |
| 15 | Pilot |
| 16 | Officer |
| 17 | Gunner |
| 18 | Combat Engineer |
| 19 | Sniper |
| 20 | Space Marine |
Skills Table
| Occupation | Skills |
| Astrophysicist | Profession/Astrophysicist, Science, Tech/Astronautic, Vehicle/Space |
| Combat Engineer | Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Security, Stealth |
| Corporate Suit | Bureaucracy, Business, Leadership, Persuade |
| Field Researcher | Science, Tech/Maltech, Tech/Postech, Tech/Pretech |
| Gunner | Athletics, Combat/Gunnery, Exosuit, Vehicle/Land |
| Infantry | Combat/Projectile, Combat/Unarmed, Exosuit, Gambling |
| Journalist | Bureaucracy, Culture/Criminal, Exosuit, Persuade |
| Mechanic | Exosuit, Gambling, Tech/Astronautic, Tech/Postech |
| Medic | Athletics, Exosuit, Perception, Tech/Medical |
| Officer | Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Leadership, Tactics |
| Pilot | Combat/Projectile, Culture/Spacer, Vehicle/Grav, Vehicle/Space |
| Planetary Scientist | Profession/Geology, Science, Tech/Postech, Vehicle/Land |
| Priest | Culture/World, Perception, Persuade, Religion |
| Scout | Culture/Traveller, Exosuit, Navigation, Survival |
| Security Analyst | Combat/Unarmed, Perception, Security, Tech/Postech |
| Sniper | Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Perception, Stealth |
| Space Marine | Combat/Energy, Combat/Primitive, Combat/Unarmed, Exosuit |
| Xenoarchaeologist | Artist/Plastics, Culture/Alien, History, Science |
| Xenobiologist | Bureaucracy, Profession/Xenobiology, Science, Tech/Medical |
Equipment Table
Character Sheet
| Occupation | Equipment |
| Astrophysicist | Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit |
| Combat Engineer | Instapanel, Spike Thrower, Vacc Suit |
| Corporate Suit | Dataslab, Portabox, Vacc Suit |
| Field Researcher | Toolkit/Postech, Toolkit/Pretech, Vacc Suit |
| Gunner | Heavy Machine Gun, Metatool, Vacc Suit |
| Infantry | Mag Rifle, Telescoping Pole, Vacc Suit |
| Journalist | Argus Web, Dataslab, Vacc Suit |
| Mechanic | Toolkit/Astronautic, Toolkit/Postech, Vacc Suit |
| Medic | Lazarus Patch, Medkit, Vacc Suit |
| Officer | Binoculars, Mag Pistol, Vacc Suit |
| Pilot | Metatool, Void Carbine, Vacc Suit |
| Planetary Scientist | Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit |
| Priest | Survival Kit, Translator Torc, Vacc Suit |
| Scout | Navcomp, Survival Kit, Vacc Suit |
| Security Analyst | Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit |
| Sniper | Climbing Harness, Sniper Rifle, Vacc Suit |
| Space Marine | Assault Suit, Grenade (x2), Laser Rifle |
| Xenoarchaeologist | Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit |
| Xenobiologist | Dataslab, Bioscanner, Vacc Suit |
Character Sheet
This should be fun. And horrific. And sad.
Please feel free to use any of this for your own games.
- Ark
Please feel free to use any of this for your own games.
- Ark
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Tired of Christmas Music Already?
Then it's obviously time for GERMAN CLUB MUSIC!
You can danke me later! (I BLAME YOU, SPOTIFY!)
- Ark
Nachtleben - MURANO meets TOKA feat. Dumbstruke
Morgens immer müde - Laing
Du & Ich - Colina
Party (Ich Will Abgehn) - Die Atzen
Dynamit - Kollegah & Farid Bang
You can danke me later! (I BLAME YOU, SPOTIFY!)
- Ark
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Redshirts: Jack Frost Roasting Over an Open Fire
![]() |
| HO HO DIE. |
The scouts are getting rusty. I swear. Come on, a robot Santa, reindeer, and elf? That has to mean trouble.
Kal Kek and Roswell were in the Zócalo, and Kal Kek was acting kind of grumpy. The elf came over to cheer him up by pulling out a pistol and shooting him. Then the Santa open his mouth wide and began spewing a green mist that turned people into glowing eyed yellow zombies.
Merry Christmas!
![]() |
| Robot Santas are mostly evil. Mostly. |
Much chaos and battle ensue. Eventually, the evil robots were blown up, but Roswell the (sort of) good robot was blown up in the process. Kal Kek grabbed his C3-P0-like head and ran with it like a football back to the ship.
While escaping from the zombie gas, Dr. Ramapudi followed Newt, through the station's air ducts. Newt was the eight year old psychic girl that the scouts had rescued in an earlier episode from an crazed interplannar entity that had inhabited her body for 600 years. Well, Newt, being a bit untrusting, had stockpiled rifles and grenades in the air ducts, just in case something like this happened.
Eventually, the party made it back to the ship, where they found out that the Reprieve had been undergoing maintenance and had it's engines dismantled. Having no other craft that could mount a defense versus the Skorpios attack fleet, they hopped in the Molten Rain mech suit assault shuttle and blasted off.
The plan was simple. Everyone was to get in their mech suits and be shot out of the mech suit rail gun at the oncoming Skorpios Cruiser that was making an attack run on the Beachhead Base. At the end, "Profit" was somehow to be gained, but plan for everything in-between was somewhat hazy.
The Skorpios Cruiser was actually an old, run-down ship constructive with run-down, primitive parts at the Lost colony of Ukraine, so luckily, it didn't have much defense against seven human size projectiles shot at it. The scouts didn't have much defense against being shot at a cruiser, either. Kal Kek ented up penetrating a armored turret with his head.
The scouts began to dig through the ship like miners, using the mechs' urban assault abilities to turn the cruiser's bulkhead's into Swiss cheese. They plugged Roswell's C3-P0 head into a computer conduit in a maintenance tunnel to begin the cyber assault. Roswell took over a pack of maintenance bots that launched an assault on the bridge while the party split up in an attempt to take over engineering, nullify the angry grav tank muscling it's was through the maintenance shafts, and eliminate the threat of unattended cafeterias.
![]() |
| Admiral Beringer looses eye in attack. |
The guns on the asteroid base mopped up the stream of evacuees and the scouts took control of the devastated, burnt out hulk. Regretfully, the resident psychic was killed in a munitions explosion. Attempts to revive him by The Boy using an untested nanotech revitalization system proved to have horrific results, turning the dead body into an ever expanding ball of gray goo that was eventually isolated by Aquila scientists.
As a reward for saving the day, Admiral Beringer cancelled the scheduled court-martial of the group for horrendous crimes to humanity that they had perpetrated on previous missions. Merry Christmas, Redshirts, Merry Christmas.
- Ark
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Top Games
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| Dice Bomb by ~j-burgess |
The Top Seven RPGs I've Played
- D&D 4e
- AD&D
- Champions 4e
- AD&D 2e
- Holmes D&D (or Molday Basic - they kind of blur)
- Gama World 1e
- 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
- AD&D
- RoleMaster
- D&D 4e
- Stars Without Number
- GURPS Space
- Twilight: 2000
- 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
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
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