Ping.

So, I seem to have agreed to run a Nobilis one-shot next week, in addition to playing Shieldhaven's Yearly One-Shot, a Song of Ice and Fire hack set in his homebrew setting of Aurikesh. So I am focusing on that, and on other writing projects, and yeah.

So anyway, go read This very thoughtful look at Vancian Magic which does a really good job of covering what I actually like about playing a Magister in AE. Though I do agree with Shieldhaven's comment that seeking and finding spells would be super awesome-- I've just never played a game where the DM actually cared about running that kind of thing, or offering that kind of treasure.

...And I still think that 4e isn't bad for doing this, I mean, there's actually rules for handing out powers as Training Treasure, and I imagine that there are ways to make rituals cooler, and more of this kind of flavor.

Which kind of gives me an idea for how I'd run a 4e game, the next time I try (my current game notwithstanding, I am hoping to pick that up in Jan.)... but Shieldhaven's been making noises about wanting some heroic adventure, and I've been making noises about wanting to run something he could play in.

Basically, I'd probably do one of those hacks where either bonuses are built in and divorced from gear (so that gear can be just cool abilities/powers, instead of What You Need To Hit/Not be Hit more), create an interesting list of maybe 12 magical components that have to be combined variously to create different effects for crafting/spell creation, and have them be real things that the players are actively seeking in-game. Also, I'd consider severely limiting the either all Arcane Classes, or maybe just Wizards, to just their At-Wills, and maybe 1 Encounter.

Daily Powers would come soley from rituals, which could be created via a recipe (a certain combination of materials related to the kind of effect one wants), or discovered in play. A Ritual would need to be performed at the end of an Extended Rest, and grants the Wizard their daily for the day. You could only prepare one a day, of course, though you could have a pretty hefty spell-book of Rituals. Perhaps at very high levels, one could have more, and I suppose one could do this for Dailies and Encounters and have lesser and greater Rituals, but I dunno.

I also kind of like the idea of Rituals that would allow you to, say, swap out a power for a multi-charge power that's better, but costs you something, materially.

The big problem I always had with Vancian Magic in D&D wasn't that you had a spell book, and had to prepare spells, it's that the components were undefined and were just, "I dunno, components." and later ones seemed to just assign arbitrary, random components without rhyme or reason... incense, or a 500 gp bowl had no contextual connection to anything, you just know you need them. What I would need to make me happy there would be context. Not unlike the Oblivion alchemy system, where you know, for example, that a certain mushroom cap is super useful in invisibility potions, or strength, or whatnot.

Anyway. I'll think about that more when I don't have a story due today, and you know, actual work. Though it's awesome how I only really have ideas when I've got deadlines.

Arkham City's Social Implications: the Bad, the Good, and the Lazy.

So, Shieldhaven is on the New Game Plus of Arkham City, which is, really, a good enough game to go ahead and play through a second time on, "OH FUCK WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE MURDERED OVER AND OVER BY MOOKS DEAR GOD WHY!?" difficulty. I mean it. It's everything good about, say, Prototype and everything good about Arkham Asylum rockin' it together in a bad-ass package where you even get to play Catwoman!

Which doesn't mean that Well-deserved criticism is not well-deserved.

But I don't really want to talk about the details of how the egregiously gross attitudes of the thugs in Arkham City are wrong, though I'm going to. What I want is to talk about one of the defenses that I keep seeing pop up for this kind of thing. Basically:

"It's not sexism, it's just lazy writing. Which means it's disappointing, but not really malicious."

I also want to talk about the social issues deal that Arkham City does do right, but we'll see if I have enough brain for that.

Brain Dump.

Taking a hiatus from Roundups, due to excessive work on DtD, and general exhaustion. Which, I realise, is kind of lame, as I really owe a re-cap of Don't Rest Your Head and our latest Mage session, and this weekend will be AE... well, perhaps I'll get my brain together enough to deal with it sometime next week. I'd like to (if I can muster enough will) switch up a bit to other topics, and finishing outstanding projects like the Three Gates Dungeon and the pWnies.

In the meantime, you should check out Shieldhaven's 4e Crafting Hack here, and yes.

Also, the combination of FATE, Technoir, and Don't Rest Your Head has me thinking more about adjective application RP systems (instead of hit-points exactly, you apply adjectives that do bad things to people, or accept conditions) and how that might work for a psionic and/or horror system. I like them for being RP tweaks, by and large, kind of like... well, one thing I always kind of enjoyed in early D&D was making people switch up their alignment, as a way to have them tweak their RP, you know, "Okay, so what does Lawful Neutral look like on this PC?" Now, as a rule for the length of a campaign, Alignment is kind of lame, but as a temporary effect, benefit, or penalty, I like the idea of the consequences being manifest that way, in concert with the actual, mechanical penalties (whatever they are).

Also have been talking to Shieldhaven a lot about Echo Bazaar style menaces as tabletop consequences, and how that sort of thing might work, esp in Mythos Horror. Because the tradeoff of sanity v. mythos is ultimately pretty limiting, imho.

Anyway, now that I've dumped the things that are in my head for later reference, perhaps I'll be inspired to make a more thorough post, later.

Session Roundup #21

Sleepy Rabbit is sleepy. But I want to talk about the various games I've played over the past couple weeks before I run my game tomorrow. So, without further fuckery:

Dust to Dust-- yep, it's started; just out, and just wonderful. Some of the things I've complained about in other LARPs came home to roost, and that was enlightening-- specifically about time management. Which I should have known, having NPCd as much as I have, but that's all right. Got a lot of good mysteries out in play, and that's what matters. Looking forward to the next one.

I was also thinking of... so, there's games which are PVP, and games which are co-op. I am a big fan of games where the world is so Out to Murder You, that while you have as many personal and social conflicts as you like, you'd better get on with the people you live near when the shit goes down. The Arkaham Horror kind of game. And I sort of feel like that's where we are. I mean... we even have a Curiosity Shop! :D

Technoir-- I shall refer you to System Sans Setting's posts on the subject, but stop here to mention that I had a blast with this system. I got to play a completely riced out cyborg with an attack drone, who picked exactly the right stuff-- relative to a cyberware supplier, filled with odd and experemental cybernetics-- to be roped into one of the main and creepy plots, about my cousin's sister who was so borged out she was no longer even a little human. It felt deep, rich, and completely organic. Would play again. Can I play again now?

Mage: The Awakening-- Another classic session, mostly dealing with winding up the previous plotline, and getting us dealing with the consequences of having, um... disappeared off the effing map for a couple weeks. The main achievement of the session was getting the gems filled with Native American sprits into a museum's collection, thanks to the smoovness of Sequelah, and then talking to various mages about the Orders what exist, and which ones we should join. In addition to telling people more stuff about the horrible alternate reality of the Red Word. Volchik? Seriously leaning Mysterium. Mostly because while his natural inclination is Silver Ladder, everyone he's met of them, in his opinion, are obnoxious dickbags.

Nevermind what people think of him, of course.

Arcana Evolved-- There was an Arcana Evolved session run during D*Con, which has become pretty much a tradition at this point. It involved a battle against a Harrid (magic eating bastard) and his burrowing hounds and his bandit buddies, which meant that, once again, the most damage I did was giving Ghost Weapon to my friends. Though I did get off a particularly effective Gaze of Terror. But yeah... critters that _heal_ when I hit them with magic? Thumbs down. Not that shutting down the magister is a bad idea, really, and I've got enough spells that I've got a lot of indirect tricks (I mean, the Witch's best bet? Ice under the feet of the bad guys. Till the bad guy absorbs the magical ice and heals. ><) to use to be not entirely lame. This, by the way, is the fault of 3.x, which has straight up magical resistance as a thing. And I can't blame them-- energy type resist is way to easy to get around. But this is part of why I think no-fail damage, as spells are, mostly, is a not-so-great idea.

Also! Feeder Lady redeemed herself somewhat by letting us know that we could all take the ECL template: Runechild if we wanted. So I bought Child of Magic, which gave me, for free, a couple of spells that I'd totally be using all the time anyway, plus innate Magical Resistance, in addition to moar save bonuses. Suck it, monkeys!

Still gotta pick what my Rune actually says. Hm.

Legion-- system created by a couple of buddies that we playtested at D*Con. Good stuff, though the numbers run high. I was playing ehat amounted to a second level character, and felt like I couldn't fail near anything-- I just wasn't going to always critically succeed. That said, the penalties for some of the more stupid stuff I was doing-- using telekenisis to stop the spin of a plane with no engines-- were not crappy, and I could have conceivably killed myself. Also, fitting in all the characters and their stuff is not always simple. But Mr. M is a really good GM, and I had a blast. I mean, I'm a sucker for anything with a psionic skill.

Anyway, the game itself is good, old fashioned space marine sci-fi, set up for battle mechs (though we didn't get to play those), and psychic inquisitors, and awesome. Like I said, needs some numbers tweaking, but Recommended.

Gears of War, the Board Game-- yet another Fantasy Flight deal, this one takes the best things from Battlestar Galactica and makes them fit a shooter, namely the action cards. In GoW, these also represent health, and can be sacrificed based on card symbols to perform between turn actions, like following a moving teammate, guarding (attacking before the Locusts do), raising your defense by +2 dice, and something else that I never used because my character, Agustus Cole, could use every card to guard, and could guard on the same turn as other people. Which is the BEST THING EVER, and leads to awesome moments like, "OHSHIT this thing is going to eat my face!" BLAMMO! "Ah, nevermind, bitches."

The ammo mechanics are pretty cool, and chainsaws win. Would like to play a non-beginner game in future, but glad we did that board first. Anyway, I really love Fantasy Flight's full co-op board games. A solid win.

I'm probably forgetting stuff, but that's all on the top of my list right now. My DS is fixed (huzzah!), so I've been playing some oldies like Platinum Sudoku, Meteos, and Metroid Prime Pinball. Am I going to get the Phoenix Wright/Professor Layton crossover game when it comes out?

Oh yes, yes I am.

Not-Roundup #7 and

So, as you may have noticed, there was no Roundup Last week. This has to do with how Friday was start of the first ever Dust to Dust event, and now, I am all but a corpse.

I have quite a bit to talk about this week-- a bit about the event itself, and also a game of Technoir run by Systems Sans Setting-- and hopefully we'll get to it on Thursday, but it's possible that I will still be too corpsified for it. Mais alors, this has been your friendly neighborhood heads up.

Session Roundup #20

Brought to you by the incredible lateness of Dust to Dust Website Updates last night. You might look at the line, "Added Ancient Tales to the Codex of Dust." and think, "that doesn't sound like so much!" But if you are of that opinion, then I invite you to actually view the Ancient Tales Link and viddy what that actually involved-- namely, creating all those pages and adding the stuff. Oy. So. Sleepy.

Now, to bring you up to speed, last weekend was Arcana Evolved down in Georgia, following up the Last Session with a twelve hour marathon, in which we fought some super annoying mooks and a Rune Reaver. Full Disclosure: The mooks were annoying to me because they were also magisters, and dispelled my Clever Electrified Lair Trap. POUT. And I could have saved the 7th level slot for Spellmaster! GRAH!

Also, my rolls were crap. Fortunately, I made up the damage by giving Mirth and Ai-Wyn Ghost Weapon, which allowed them to bypass armor in their hits. So sweet.

This was especially useful, as the Rune Angel what I mentioned last time, who came to help us fight the Reaver?

Well, you might question the wisdom of enlisting the aid of a creature made of runes to fight a creature that eats runes with a touch. Well, we were too. Too late, unfortunately, to keep it from being a Rather familiar situation for those familiar with the classiest community on the internet. Still, we were triumphant, and classy enough to refrain from telling her to "OMG L2P!" to uninstall her skillset, or to cut off her hands rather than continue to heal our enemy every time she got hit, touched, or looked at funny. Instead we subjected her to over an hour of the Loresong Faen asking her world lore questions, which, I feel, was a fitting consequence.

Also! We got an item which increases the duration of Abjuration spells by 50%, which is super cool, as it could well be useful for me. Happy!

Shieldhaven has been playing Bastion lately, which has been a joy to watch, I've been playing Sudoku on my newly repaired DS, (W00t!), and we both have been playing a LOT of Echo Bazaar, which is a wonderful game with the world's shittiest server architecture. Ah well. Still worth it.

Next Friday is the First full Dust to Dust event EVAR. So if there is a not-roundup, or no roundup at all, please to be forgiving me, and I'll try to fill in the gaps with something that vaguely resembles content in the meantime.

Session Roundup #19

I actually have two gaming sessions for you this week! only sort-of because I skipped last week. But nu, I ran my game, for the first time since March, last Friday! That was a lot of fun; I had missed it quite a lot. A DM isn't really supposed to admit this, but boy-howdy was I flying by the seat of my pants on that one. Also, Mage: The Awakening tonight! So without further ado...


Tradya's Workshop: So, last session having been about a million years ago, and life being insane, I had done virtually no prep for this game. I'd left them at the first room of Tradya's library, back where they'd started. So they decided to try another path; the one beginning with 'A'.

They went down A, then R, Then B, then B again, then O, then wound up facing a huge construct spider, based on the Young Volcanic Dragon elite, scaled for their level (5) and with some adjustments...it was really completely terrible. The aura 1 5 poison damage that went to aura 3, the burning web zone that lasts a turn and deals 5 damage, plus webs that restrain, and a horrible bite that deals ongoing 5 fire, plus a triggered burst when hit with fire... yeah. Awful. I will post the stat block sometime when I am less wiped. Either way, it was a short session, but fun, and I look forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Mage: The Awakening: Followed hard upon last session, and also really good. We (by which I mean Sequela and Tommy) cleaned our evil-selves out of the gems we found, though Suriya's got out and tried to run. So Sequela commanded it to stay put while Tommy and Suriya shot Awakened Guns at it. I had... little to do in the fight, as nothing was susceptible to mind and Space doesn't have anything to attack with, so I worried about creating wards to calm down the craziness of the Fucks-With-Space labyrinth we were in. At any rate, we were able to trade the empty gems with the Indian spirits to get them to let us take the other two folks, and in exchange we would carry the spirits, in the gems, to museums that talked about their in-life tribal cultures. So that was all right.

On the way home, we called the Gravediggers to let them know we'd rescued their D00ds, then chatted with Diomedes and Madog (the other two d00ds) all the way back to Boston. Diomedes had been trapped in the labyrinth since the Clinton administration, so he had a lot to catch up on. Madog... used to be our evil-dopplegangers' apprentice. So we had much to talk about. We found out, in the long run, that the kid was from a reality where The Prince of A Hundred Thousand Leaves was the Reality. So my guess is that we're not in Total Recall, we're in Many Worlds, and that's... better. As the idea of having actually lost 3 years of memory, plus, was super unsettling.

Anyway, super cool. This weekend: AE. Foon!