Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
The Reachers
The D&D Blog Hop last month was interesting. it helped me think over my gaming career. But it's time to move on. Our GURPS Horror Noir game reached a pause point after the group brought down a vampire in Transylvania, and we are off to new skies.
New skies. New atmospheres. Distant atmospheres.
So, we'll be kicking off the GURPS sci-fi campaign Distant Atmospheres soon. The idea is to try to take everything I like about Traveller, Star Frontiers, 2300AD, Stars Without Number, Mass Effect, Lexx, Ghost In the Shell, and Revelation Space, pop in all into a GURPS blender, and see what happens.
In the Distant Atmospheres universe, humans are three centuries into exploring and colonizing their local neighborhood of space. While they have a high level of technology, going faster than light is beyond their abilities. That's where the Reachers come in.
The Reachers are intelligent creatures that can bend the fabric of space time enough to break off a piece and move it around, simulating faster than light travel without actually moving themselves anywhere. It's clear that the Reachers did not evolve this way, but were manufactured by some species long ago whom they do not remember.
Luckily for humans, the Reachers enjoy interstellar travel, can shift around their internal organs to create livable compartments, and they can grow to huge proportions. They can't actually travel in space in their 'natural' state, but humans have learned to augment the Reachers to survive in a vacuum and exceed the speed of light, and perform various feats of heavy lifting and hauling.
To the Reachers, this is all just good fun. They also create such a powerful magnetic field around their body that any human inside a Reacher ship is subjected to a constant MRI in which the Reacher can read their every single thought. It's really, really hard to bluff a Reacher in a card game. Well, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat.
Originally I thought that the Reachers might look like space whales or something, but after a few drawing they became more squid like. The savvy player might be reminded of Cthullu, or some other non-euclidean nightmare. And to those accusations, this GM can only shrug and grin.
- Ark
New skies. New atmospheres. Distant atmospheres.
So, we'll be kicking off the GURPS sci-fi campaign Distant Atmospheres soon. The idea is to try to take everything I like about Traveller, Star Frontiers, 2300AD, Stars Without Number, Mass Effect, Lexx, Ghost In the Shell, and Revelation Space, pop in all into a GURPS blender, and see what happens.
In the Distant Atmospheres universe, humans are three centuries into exploring and colonizing their local neighborhood of space. While they have a high level of technology, going faster than light is beyond their abilities. That's where the Reachers come in.
The Reachers are intelligent creatures that can bend the fabric of space time enough to break off a piece and move it around, simulating faster than light travel without actually moving themselves anywhere. It's clear that the Reachers did not evolve this way, but were manufactured by some species long ago whom they do not remember.
Luckily for humans, the Reachers enjoy interstellar travel, can shift around their internal organs to create livable compartments, and they can grow to huge proportions. They can't actually travel in space in their 'natural' state, but humans have learned to augment the Reachers to survive in a vacuum and exceed the speed of light, and perform various feats of heavy lifting and hauling.
To the Reachers, this is all just good fun. They also create such a powerful magnetic field around their body that any human inside a Reacher ship is subjected to a constant MRI in which the Reacher can read their every single thought. It's really, really hard to bluff a Reacher in a card game. Well, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat.
Originally I thought that the Reachers might look like space whales or something, but after a few drawing they became more squid like. The savvy player might be reminded of Cthullu, or some other non-euclidean nightmare. And to those accusations, this GM can only shrug and grin.
- Ark
Friday, February 28, 2014
Have You Learned Nothing???
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| More Marker Experimentation |
Day 28: What's the single most important lesson you've learned from playing D&D?
I learned that everyone is different. They have different reasons for coming to the table. They have different goals for themselves, and their characters, while playing. Some want to solve problems. Some want to avoid problems. Some even want to create problems.
Humanity is a diverse tapestry of personalities - even the very small subset who play D&D. Before I started playing, I didn't have much experience with people, and figured that everyone was pretty much like me.
Well, I was eleven when I started to play. :)
The gaming table is a little crucible of life. It's a social game where you are expected to be acting like someone else. Actually, what happens is most people just act MORE like themselves - more like who they really are without societal constraints. People get magnified.
Decades of DMing has shown me a lot of interesting interactions. Friendships were destroyed simply because a player refused to wake his character up for a fight with orcs. Well, another player did kick his head in multiple times trying to wake him up. It escalated quickly. My own relationship with my sister hit a big bump when I refused to let her take a bag she had in the real world into the imaginary game.
Over the years, I've tried to be an arbitrator - a table-top ombudsman - to help settle differences. But sometimes, people are so different from one another the best thing is to not to keep them in the same crucible.
The differences are not all negative, of course. I've seen many people far smarter than I play - and been marveled by their ingenuity. Wittier people as well who have set me off laughing until my stomach muscles hurt.
It was irritating when I was younger, and people were so far from my point of view that I felt like I'd never be able to communicate with them. But nowadays, I really like it when people are different. You know, different almost to the point where some type of calamity might happen if we sat in the same room together too long - but not quite passing that line.
Vive la différence.
- Ark
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Nothing Different
The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge
Day 27: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different when you first started gaming?
No, I wouldn't do anything different. I think tomorrow's question is more relevant, anyway.
In the meantime, over to the left is my third try with Prismacolor markers. I think I'm getting the hang of them. The big problem is that I don't have an oranges, reds, or yellows. If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably grab some warmer colors. ;p
- Ark
Day 27: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different when you first started gaming?
No, I wouldn't do anything different. I think tomorrow's question is more relevant, anyway.
In the meantime, over to the left is my third try with Prismacolor markers. I think I'm getting the hang of them. The big problem is that I don't have an oranges, reds, or yellows. If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably grab some warmer colors. ;p
- Ark
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge
Day 26: Do you still game with the group that introduced you to the hobby?
No.
But here is a picture I drew to distract you. Okay, not really - just still practicing with those new markers.
- Ark
Day 26: Do you still game with the group that introduced you to the hobby?
No.
But here is a picture I drew to distract you. Okay, not really - just still practicing with those new markers.
- Ark
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