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 #17

So, I effed up two weeks of Roundup, but there wasn't really all that much till last night: Mansions of Madness, Angry Birds, Fallout: New Vegas, and last night's Mage: The Awakening.

Mansions of Madness: Shieldhaven already did a thorough analysis here, but yeah, it's awesome. I played the Nun, which is pretty much the best choice in Arkham Asylum. And a good one here too, though it kind of hoses your buddies-- since shenanigans are more expensive to play on you, the Storyteller hoses them more often. I'm curious to try with some of the other characters, now that I know something about the game.

The oddest thing is that how our lives would have been SO MUCH HARDER if we'd gone for all of the clues. Although everyone lost, it would have been more climactic, if harder, if we had remembered to go for the next proper target. Ah well. Booze and Lovecraft...

...is just fine, actually.

Angry Birds: Effing addictive iphone games. I have nothing to say about this, but it's fun. Yes. Fun. Shut up.

Fallout: New Vegas: So, Made it to the Strip. So far, aligning with Mr. House, though that may change. You know what I love? How I'm Neutral (coz of stealing), but there's so many Good Guy options which involve coming to a peaceful solution, where no one dies. This makes me so happy. I like. Anyway, I'm probably going to go do a bunch of side-quests before I do any more of the main quest, except that I don't want to blow my free pass with the Caesar's Legion guys, while I have it.

Mage: The Awakening: Super fun session last night, involving a forest of Forgotten Ghosts and Spirits, where we went to rescue some Sentinels that had gotten... ah, lured from the path. However, our Moros and our Thyrsus clued us into the beings trying to do the same to us, and we went to the Guardians of the Forest, who challenged one of our warriors to a fisticuffs battle, with the rest of us offering support. We could cast spells on our guy, or the terrain (including the ghost critters in the area), but not on the other warrior or _his_ support. So, if it's a bareknucklething, we threw Tommy (Stands in Fire) under the bus. And then...

Well, Ghost Bees.

Ghost Bees and Ghost Wolves from me, unlucky ground from our Fate Guy, and Tommy turned plants into a Tiger.

So that was awesome.

Tomorrow night we've got an Over The Edge session, so I am looking forward to that most assiduously, and later this month, there should be the Return of My D&D game.