Playing For The Other Side

As I mentioned (briefly) in yesterday's post, I've been thinking a lot about other RPGs lately...that is to say, RPGs other than D&D. I even had this crazy dream this morning that I was a part of of some classic adventure gaming "organization;" I was on some type of "board of directors," a round table of three to five people, discussing the direction of gaming and such, and I broached the subject of such exploratory ideas, to which I received some raised eyebrows. "Playing for the other side?" they asked. Yeah. "Please," one board guy told me. Please go on or please stop? "Please stop."

That's when I woke up.

Last night I bought Kevin Siembieda a sandwich. Maybe a sandwich and a beer. I'm not sure what food prices are like in Detroit these days, but the price of the book I purchased (on-line) was less than I paid for my dinner entree in Bellingham Friday evening...and Bellingham prices are a LOT cheaper than Seattle. So, maybe a sandwich and a beer; perhaps with an upgrade to a side salad instead of fries. Getting his lunch was the least I could do for him, given all the Palladium content I've been consuming 'on the side,' in recent weeks.

Let me give folks the whole skinny.

Waaaay back in June (after school got out) my son was in Mexico, hanging with los abuelos. At the end of his trip, my wife flew down to be with him and her parents the last few days, leaving my daughter and I to fend for ourselves. Sofia is a different beast from her brother...both kids get a lot of their personality from my wife and I (duh), but they get different aspects from each of us. Sofia, I think it's safe to say, has a  lot more creativity and imagination than her brother. He is very "nuts and bolts," very left-brained, very precise and practical. Sofia, on the other hand, is always leaping ahead to the idea of what to do with knowledge. She gets (more-or-less) the same high marks as her brother in writing or math or science...but then she turns around around and writes stories or starts businesses or makes "inventions." Sometimes, she puts the cart before the horse (she started filming a 'movie' with an old digital camcorder before she wrote a script, for example) but she is very "big picture" oriented. She started a band this summer and roped two of her friends into it, learning songs and writing her own (one of her bandmates only plays the trumpet, so she is writing a "trumpet bit" for a song they're working on. Sofia doesn't play trumpet...).

ANYway. Sofia and I were left on our own, and while I was cleaning the kitchen she flipped on the TV and started watching The Incredibles - a film she's seen before, more than once. But it led both of us down a rabbit hole of binge-watching a ton of superhero movies (mostly Spider-Man and Batman films)...all told, I think we watched half a dozen over a couple-three days. 

Which, of course, is the kind of thing that tends to kick my mind into the "superhero RPG" mode, where I will once again, madly comb through the scores of hero games I have, get frustrated, resolve to write my own, and then set down THAT Quixotic road...which never pans out. This time, I used Google's AI to bounce ideas off, and came up with some really cool mechanics...but then my laptop glitched and I lost everything I'd written. I still have the notes to recreate stuff, but writing is...well, it's work. Figuring out how to turn a phrase, how to explain a concept, how to teach and communicate in a text that will be read by people without you there to mentor them...well, all that takes time and effort and recreating that was more than just "rewriting." So...I punted.

Or, rather, I pivoted. At the same time I was working furiously on supers-related stuff, I also started getting into pulp action stuff. I had pulled my copy of Night Owl Workshop's Raiders of the Lost Artifacts to compare it to their Guardians (supers), and that had perked my interest in a whole swath of pulp-related adventure RPGs. Fact is, my own pulp adventure RPG (a long-term project from "back in the day" when I was running games out of the Baranof) was still on my bench of Things-To-Do. So I was considering THAT, mainly in terms of "early 20th century heroic adventurers" (a la Doc Savage and crew)...a different type of "superhero" game, right? But that wasn't the "pivot." The PIVOT was thinking about old movies and shows I needed to show my daughter (like Tales of the Gold Monkey or High Road to China, etc., etc.) perhaps also brought on by reading of ERB's Tarzan novels simultaneously (natch)...and then REMEMBERING an old Japanimation film from my youth that might be of interest to her. My daughter, in addition to all her other quirks and foibles, is an absolute stan for everything 1980s.

So it was I started down the AI road of looking up something I thought was called "Shogun Warriors," but was actually called Starvengers...at least, it was called that in its English dub version. And THAT led me (via AI queries) down the rabbit-hole of the differences between the "giant robot" genre and the "real robot" genre...which led me to Gundam (which I was aware of, but had never watched). Of course, anything futuristic/war-related is pretty much my wheelhouse. Anyhoo, from there I went back to an old fave of mine: Mike Pondsmith's Mekton Zeta. Bought Pondsmith a sandwich, too (and he lives in Seattle these days, so I know how much a sandwich costs).

From MZ and Gundam, I got back into Cyberpunk 2020 and Appleseed which, of course, led me back to cyborgs, including my own World War Borg which I decided to dust off and refurbish...again, using AI to help me refine and expand some ideas to make a really nice little RPG war game. Or the start of one. 

And then I thought: how exactly does 'borg warfare still make sense in our age of drone strikes, AI, and autonomous weapon systems?

Much depressed (although, to be fair, I DID find a way to make it all coherent), I idly thumbed through my copies of Chrome Berets, Warlords of Russia, Advanced Recon, etc., etc. and then threw on the latest Zock-Bock Radio episode (in English) where Settembrini discusses "classic" BattleTech with New Yorker Sleazy_B, a man whose acquaintance I made at last year's Cauldron convention. Back to the giant robots again (so it seemed) but now with a system I've been intimately familiar with since '86 or thereabouts. Again: my wheelhouse.

As always, the discussion was excellent. I'll say this about the Germans' podcast: compared to what you hear in, say, your average (American) gaming pod, they know their stuff and don't just pull stuff out of their ass. When they talk about what works and why, it's because they've tested it, not theorized about it, and they don't speculate about stuff they don't know, or make assumptions or jump to false conclusions just to get things to have "discussion." For me, it's a breath of fresh air. 

But enough glaze. Here's what I took away from the 'pod: classic Battletech works in the same way and for the same reason that AD&D works: it forces you to live in a world of dollars and cents. Yes, there is the pressure-cooker environment of being "in an endless war" (danger! danger! all around) but you still have to pay the (c-)bills. You need to buy parts. You still need to buy fuel. You still need to buy ammo. People get killed but there're always new recruits to step up and continue the campaign. BT just does a lot of the world building for you...and then the players live in that world. And the GM runs the world. 

AD&D has a larger playground, but the game is the same.

So, while I momentarily had the (very brief) thought of starting up a BattleTech campaign (after all, the box of all my first edition BT books...including MechWarrior...has been sitting under my bed for the last 18 months or so) I quickly discarded the thought. I wanted to play something my daughter would enjoy, and war games (or games based on a war premise) just don't get her jazzed the same way they do the boy and myself. INSTEAD, I started thinking if BattleTech (a simplistic RPG, but still an RPG if you include MW) can function for long-term campaign play, is there a way this can function for other genres of RPG? 

Can it function for (for example) a superhero game?

I've had long-running "supers" games in the past. I did the Marvel thing for a couple-plus years, and I ran a LOT of Vampire (gothic, blood-sucking supers) in the early 90s. These, like many RPGs, have issues that tend to derail long-term play. And yet, comic book universes...comic book titles...can last decades. Before 1990 there were nearly 800 issues of Spider-Man comic between Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, and Marvel Team-Ups. That's not even counting guest appearances and mini-series (like Secret Wars). If every issue was the equivalent of single weekly game session, that would be a 15+ year campaign...that's a ton of gaming even withOUT the other various franchises of the Marvel Universe.  That's a lot of mileage out of one teenager bitten by a radioactive spider having to deal with school issues and romantic entanglements while fighting bad guys.

[and that's just talking about the first 40ish years of the character's life...not the last 36 years of re-boots and re-hashes in various media forms]

In many ways, I'd liken a "comic book universe" like the Marvel franchise to a long-term D&D campaign. Not in terms of premise, but in how the thing grows organically over time, taking on a life of its own. Places like the Baxter Building, Avengers Mansion, that X-Man school in upstate New York, and various factions (the Kingpin's mafia, Shi'Ar aliens, "The Hand" ninja clan, mutant-hunting Sentinels, Ka-Zar's Savage Lands, etc., etc.) all get introduced over-time, piecemeal, and gradually become a (semi-)coherent...or, at least, acceptable...whole. The first time the characters encounter Atlantis and Namor, it's like "wow...WTF?" But then, as a part of the setting, players can make USE of such things, as necessity demands ('where are we going to find an inter-dimensional gate device? let's call Reed Richards!').  This kind of thing happens all the time in a long-term D&D campaign...and your average comic book universe is just as wild and woolly (if not more so) than an average old school outing. "Gonzo" has nothing on Stan Lee.

But D&D is an easier start. You have its premise of treasure hunters. There's no need for a Big Bad, Sauron-esque figure. There are dungeons: go get 'em. Survive and thrive and the world will gradually grow up around the players, developing as needed to keep the adventure going. And the players will pursue that adventure because it is their livelihood...they need money to survive. To eat. To resupply. To train. To hire. All that jazz. The nuts and bolts of a living, 'real' (if imaginary and fantastical) world. 

The vast majority of supers RPGs? They don't worry about that stuff. It's abstracted because it's not primary to the gist, the premise of the supers game. We don't care whether Peter Parker can pay his rent...we care whether or not he can save Mary Jane from Doc Ock and still make it to Aunt May's 85th birthday (or whatever). Manufactured drama... like so many so-called "storytelling games," this is what is embraced by the superhero RPG. This is their sacred cow; long before 5E started D&D down the road of "not letting the rules get in the way of a good story," superhero RPGs were preaching this approach.

Mostly. There was at least ONE supers RPG that was still willing to dial up the cruft in order to simulate the granular reality of a super "reality." Even as it also went GM-fiat with regard to the reward structure including bonus points for "good roleplaying" (whatever the hell that means).

And so, once again we come back around to Kevin Siembieda (the guy whose sandwich AND beer I purchased) and his RPG opus Heroes Unlimited. A game that I have posted about ad nauseam on this blog, alway coming back to how much I dislike the system, the mechanics, the clunky-ness, the disorganized 'kitchen sink' approach to the whole damn thing. Despite Mr. Siembieda's overwhelming generative creativity, I have never wanted to do more than use the book as the base inspiration for a better game, a game with more elegant design, one that doesn't suck rocks. A game of my own, in other words. One of these day.

*sigh*  Isn't that the same damn thing I was saying about AD&D a decade ago?

Screw it. I really don't have the time to rewrite games, let alone write RPGs from scratch (even when my computer doesn't crash). Why not simply play the game as written, and worry about running the campaign with the system designed? Stop complaining and learn to love the bomb, so to speak. The system is pretty darn easy, after all. A thousand skills all working off a percentile system. A combat system that's both simple and fairly intuitive (so long as you've calculated all the bonuses/adjustments ahead of time); I'll bet with a little practice I could run it with something approaching the efficiency of AD&D. Probably.  And the dumb-dumb arbitrary advancement system? Just a cheat sheet, that I throw check marks in during the course of the game and add-up at the end of the session...easy-peasy. 

BUT...yes, yes, there is a "but" here...BUT there still remains the issue that keeps a supers RPG from functioning like a D&D campaign (or even a wargame like BattleTech): what's the motivation? Heroes aren't getting their hands dirty for money. Well, maybe if they're government operatives or something...but those in THAT boat would be hamstrung as far as being independent adventurers, constrained to "mission parameters." No, that is the antithesis of adventure gaming.

The fact is that (within the genre) the super-protagonists ARE motivated by all that heroic do-gooder stuff that is absolutely cringe and/or vomit-inducing when forced down the throats of D&D players. And, as with the premise of D&D, this isn't something that holds universal appeal for gamers. Not everyone is going to dig it. And, yet, that's the game. Do you want to be a heroic adventurer, finding a way to fight crime and super-villains while navigating the problematic aspects of your secret double-life? Because that's the game...and if that's not your cup of tea, no sweat, but that's what we're doing. 

It's a different type of RPG...pure and simple. It certainly was back in my old Marvel Superhero days. That was almost all "soap opera" (compared to AD&D) with far fewer fights and battles and far more situation and relationship challenges. Vampire was a tad scrappier (it really depended on the players involved in the various 'sagas' I ran) but, again, a different animal then D&D. A sillier animal, if I'm being honest...and that's saying something.

I digress. The point is long-term campaign play for a supers game has to be considered in terms of a different foundation modeled on the "universes" of various comic companies. And yet, it requires many of the same tenets as are needed for an AD&D campaign...not genre emulation and attention/championing of tropes. But the same serious mind, iron fist, hard limits, rules of engagement, allowance of metagaming, etc., etc.  that is part-and-parcel to running a successful AD&D game...it's got to apply here, too, no? Regardless, I find that I'm willing to give it a try. Call it curiosity...or the thought that doing something different is better than repeating the same madness and expecting results to change.

That's where I'm at; that's what I'm thinking. I own (and have read) Aaron Allston's Strike Force, detailing his eight year Champions campaign. I own (and have read) some of the comic versions of Martin's Wild Card stories, ostensibly based on his own Superworld campaign. I remain unconvinced that these are quite the thing I'm looking for...again, I am NOT trying to tell stories with my RPGs or explore what it "means" to be "super," or the psychology of characters, or their personal story arcs of discovery, redemption, revenge, or what-have-you. Instead, I want to run a world that my players can live in. I'm not sure that will fly, but I haven't yet attempted the thing.

For my daughter: I wonder if this is what she's looking for in a game. She likes superheroes (comics, TV, and film versions) but not ALL superheroes. She's not a fan of the Avengers films (for example) feeling that all they are is one fight after another, which is samey-same boring. On the other hand, she dug the Thunderbolts film, because she felt there was more story going on and more "interesting" (I think she means "psychology-based") stuff to explain the show's conflicts. Heroes Unlimited has some tools that help this kind of campaign (i.e. "world") development...which I will discuss in a later post. 

BECAUSE, as is, this post has gone on for a looong time. And I'm sure it's bored some folks and felt idiotic and meandering (or even misguided) to others. That's okay, by the way...I just wanted to write something for Ye Old Blog, and showing people where my head is (currently) at and the sick way I migrate from one thought to another in the gaming realm is...well, it's what I do. 

Nothing more concrete tonight (er, today. It's Monday morning at this point). I'm calling it. But I'll keep folks posted with updates, as I can. 

Cheers.

Play Misty For Me

My post Wednesday about the new Luke Cage Netflix series left out a lot of things in hopes of maintaining pointed brevity (not usually my strong suit). Some of the thoughts I neglected to mention included the following:

• New York is an absolutely huge place and for once I watched a series that gave it a real sense of its scale. Like how a single person...even the super heroic Cage...can simply vanish into its immensity, simply by forgoing a flamboyant costume and putting on a hoody. 
• The writing of the show was both hit and miss. The misses have to do with the overall story arcs and pacing which, a bit like a musical progression in jazz seemed to meander a bit in a way that offended my staid "story sensibilities." However, the hits just kept on coming when it comes to the writing of the characters, which are almost entirely made up of complex, nuanced individuals. The heroes aren't perfect saints, and the villains aren't all irredeemable sinners...in its own small way, Luke Cage manages to capture both the ugliness and beautiful potential that's in all of us.
• A lot of articles I've read about the series compares it to the "blaxploitation" flicks of the 70s, but I think that's pretty fucking lazy analysis. There are plenty of films out there that use the same formulaic ingredients as blaxploitation (including corrupt authority, street crime, and one misunderstood hardass doing the vigilante thang) that feature white actors with names like Seagal, VanDamme, Stalone, Russell, Swayze, Willis, etc. Despite the music, despite the racial themes, Luke Cage is a series that ignores (or condemns) much of the machismo from those earlier films. This isn't a show about a guy getting over on "the man," and while it's sexy enough, it has little to do with the protagonist's sexual prowess (often an integral part of the blaxploitation genre).

Which leads me to the REAL point of this post: talking about Simone Missick in her role as the show's co-protagonist, Misty Knight.

"I don't seek justice. I stalk it."

Yeah, I sure didn't see that one coming. I was really looking forward to watching Luke Cage (kept checking Ye Old Netflix every week or so to see the status) based on the strength of A) Marvel's previous three offerings (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil 2), as wells B) Mike Colter's turn as the titular Cage character. And, yes, the show managed to keep my rather high expectations high on both counts (Colter is a bonafide star, and his interpretation of the Cage character has turned me into a fan of a hero that...previously...only cracked my top-tier by dint of his team associations). What I was NOT expecting, and what's blown me away the more I've considered it, is the way the show creators decided to double-down on the amount of Hero by giving us huge whopping side of Misty Knight who, as I've mentioned before, may be my second favorite super heroine, after Babs Gordon.

Folks who don't know the comic book history of Misty should know that, like Luke Cage, she's best known as one-half of her own dynamic duo, sometimes known as Nightwing Restorations, sometimes known as the Daughters of the Dragon.

[folks interested in Misty's early comic book history would do well to check out this series of posts at Out of this World from back in 2011]

The comic book Misty appears to be originally inspired by the likes of Cleopatra Jones, Christie Love, and most any Pam Grier character from the 1970's. She's a tough, street-smart ex-cop who runs a private detective agency and battles super-criminals and crime lords with chop-sockey martial arts and a large caliber revolver. The "Marvel touch" (I suppose) is that she sports a bionic right arm, having lost her natural one in the same explosion that ended her law enforcement career. Outside her own stories (alongside her half-Asian partner Colleen Wing), her biggest claim to fame for her first couple decades came as the on-again/off-again girlfriend of Danny Rand (Iron Fist), frequently saving his sorry ass after he'd been whipped by someone tougher than himself. However, in the last decade or so she's been pulled out of mothballs by the powers-that-be and put in charge of a number of different super teams, a kind of cyborg-Oracle type whose lack of superpowers has no effect on her ability to command and lead.

Much tougher than
Electrawoman & Dynagirl.

[I don't know why it is that I love cyborg characters so much. I guess I was a big fan of the $6 Million Dollar Man as a kid...all those fights against Sasquatch and Fembots and whatnot...]

The Misty Knight in Luke Cage is quite the step down from the bionic superwoman leading war-goddesses in Asgard. She's still a New York cop (detective, not beat), and she still has two (non-augmented) arms. She's good at her job, she likes her job, and she's a lot likely to engage in real (well, "TV real" anyway) police procedure than kick ass or blaze away, John Woo style. She also shares nearly as much screen time as Mike Colter (though rarely in the same scenes), making the character feel very much like the co-protagonist of the show, following a parallel story arc.

"Parallel" is the key word, though. She's got her own bag of problems, drama, and baggage to deal with. She has her own history, her own tragic past, much of which is revealed in a great series of one-on-one scenes with her IA investigator (episode 9). Missick is fantastic in the role, bringing humor, grit, and nuance to the character. My understanding is that she's a veteran stage actor, but regardless of whether or not that's true, she brings a smoldering subtlety to the character where someone of lesser skill might instead bring explosive caricature. For an actor, the writing of the Misty Knight character (in this series) is fantastic...it's meaty in all sorts of ways, giving plenty of emotional layers and biz to play with. But you have to have a competent actor to pull it off, and the one they landed is excellent. A lot of internet fans are already calling for a Misty Knight solo series (the same way people were calling for a Punisher series after Daredevil). While that would be cool and all, I have to say that Luke Cage belongs almost as much to Misty as Luke does...they're not quite a dynamic duo, but you're often getting two for the price of one in the show.

Having said THAT...I have no idea how the MCU creators will ever bring this character "up to spec" for those of us who are longtime fans. There was a chance in this season [*SPOILER ALERT*] to blow up both her arm and her career and leave her in a place to form Nightwing Restorations, but the writers didn't take it. And what's more, why should they when they already have a hardboiled detective lady (in the form of Jessica Jones) to run with? Meanwhile, I can't see how this particular version of Misty Knight would EVER fall for a schmuck like Danny Rand...I mean, love is blind and all, but Luke seems to be far more to her taste. And how does one ever get around to dating the partner of the Hero of Harlem?

I mean...sorry, Danny. There is far-fetched (like bionic arms and mystic extra-dimensional kung fu temples), and then there's REALLY far-fetched. You watch Luke Cage and tell me if her character would take Finn Jones over Mike Colter. These MCU shows on Netflix appear to have strict caps when it comes to how much fantasy they'll put into a series.
; )

And Claire thought Luke was
"corny." Jesus, Iron Fist.

KLOANE WAR KNIGHTS - C.3 P.3

Damage & Death

Beamrazors and blasters, the ubiquitous weaponry of the setting, lead to especially grisly and traumatic (if not fatal) wounds. The critical hit table that follows should be used in place of the one found in the X-Plorers rulebook (adjust for PHY as normal):

ROLL 1D8*	RESULT
1 or less	Instant Death!
2	Mortal Wound
3 to 4	Grievous Wound
5	Incapacitated
6 to 7	Beaten
8 or more	Adrenaline Surge!

*Add PHY adjustment; if damage sustained is from unarmed attacks, treat all results of 5 or less as Incapacitated.

Instant Death! Just what the result says.

Mortal Wound: Character will die in D6 rounds (adjusted for PHY) unless intervention is provided in the form of a psychic talent (for example, resist death or vitality transfer).

Grievous Wound: As Incapacitated, but the character has been permanently maimed and/or scarred and will probably require cybernetic reconstruction to fully recover.

Incapacitated: The character is incapacitated with pain and will fall unconscious (for D6x10 minutes) unless she succeeds at a PHY saving throw. A conscious character can take one action (psychic or otherwise) per round, but all dice rolls are made at a -2 penalty and the only movement possible is very slow crawling.

Beaten: The character knows her luck has run out, but suffers no other ill effects. If wounded again, subsequent critical hit rolls are made at a cumulative -1 penalty.

Adrenaline Surge: As per the X-Plorers rulebook.

Star Knights are taught to revere life and act in its preservation whenever possible, though sometimes the greater preservation of life means ending the life of another (especially when it comes to Shadow Lords and other corrupt psychics). When using a beamrazor, a Star Knight may choose to Grievously Wound an opponent instead of killing it at 0 hit points, usually slicing away an opponent’s weapon hand or arm. If the target is a Shadow Lord roll 1D4 to see how many limbs are severed as dictated by “the will of the Star Force” (on a roll of “4” the Star Knight cannot help but cut the villain in twain, causing Instant Death).

Cybernetic Reconstruction

Cybernetic replacement in KWN is not a matter of improvement, but rather one of expedience: with the ubiquity of cyborgs (see Chapter 2), why take the time to grow a cloned organ for transplant when a borg limb is more cheaply installed (and without the threat of host rejection)? Due to the number and diversity of sentient species, the study of cybernetic installation is much easier to master than the medicine and biology of a million life forms spread across the galaxy; skilled surgeons in the KWN setting are more akin to a mechanic than a family practitioner.

Characters that sustain a Grievous Wound may require reconstruction as part of their healing process; roll on the following table:

ROLL 1D8	RECOVERY RESULT
1 to 4	Cybernetic reconstruction needed
5	No cybernetics, but -1 to INT*
6	No cybernetics, but -1 to AGI*
7	No cybernetics, but -1 to PHY*
8	Full miraculous recovery!

*Attribute permanently reduced.

A character requiring cybernetic reconstruction has to put in time in a capable medical facility, either shipboard or planet-side; until she does she cannot recover more than one-half her lost hit points.

Receiving cybernetic replacement diminishes a person’s sense of self, as they become less organic, more machine. For every incident of reconstruction, the character’s PRE score is permanently reduced by one point, reflecting the blow to the psyche. Because of the attribute’s importance, this can be a tremendous loss to a Star Knight or psychic character.

A character can elect to forgo cybernetic reconstruction even when indicated (she still requires a medical facility to fully recover). Doing so means permanently lowering the character’s max HPs by one point per level of experience. In addition, a character will suffer other challenges depending on the nature of the injury (damaged vision, loss of locomotion, missing hand/arm, inability to speak due to a missing jaw, etc.). Such effects will need to be adjudicated by the Referee.

An individual purposefully maimed by beamrazor (see Damage & Death above) always requires cybernetic reconstruction to replace the lost limb(s).

Vehicle Combat

Vehicle combat with atmospheric craft isn’t much different from normal combat: standard vehicles have hit points (not hull points) and AC just like PCs, and if brought to 0 hit points the vehicle ceases to function. All cycles have 10 hit points and AC 12, while cars have 20 hit points and AC 14. The pilot of a vehicle adds any AGI adjustment to AC (to reflect their maneuvering) and psychics may add their psychic defense bonus (PRE) as well. At high speeds, opponents have an additional penalty of -2 to hit a moving vehicle (individuals firing from such a moving vehicle receive the same penalty).

Explorer vehicles are a little less maneuverable and don’t receive AC bonuses from their pilot, but they are fairly sturdy with an AC 16 and 40 hit points.

[to be continued]

[Kloane War Knights is copyright 2013 by Jonathan Becker and Running Beagle Games. The X-Plorers rpg is copyright 2009, Dave Bezio & Grey Area Games. The X-Plorers trademark is used under the X-Plorers Trademark License]

Sour Apples

In other news, my wife has asked me to please please stop buying giant chipa off the street...she is convinced this has been the cause behind a recent waistline expansion. I've managed to cut back, but I still ate a couple this week...yesterday, I needed the "comfort food."

And that's because it was a helluva day. I only got a couple hours of sleep Wednesday night AND my day care provider was out half the day, so I was doing the kids thang on next-to-no-sleep up till the afternoon. Then I accompanied the wife to a work function where I drank gin and tonics and consumed piles of grilled meat till midnight.

And did I mention I'm sick to boot?

ANYway...that was yesterday, and it was my own damn fault I was tired, as I stayed up trying to catch replays of TV shows that I'd wanted to watch earlier in the week but hadn't managed to do...shows like Veep and Vice and Game of Thrones. They don't have On Demand in Paraguay, so waiting till 2:30am (Thursday morning) is the only way you can see something you missed the first time around. Well, if you want to watch in English...the Spanish-dubbed version of GoT was a little earlier (like 1:45am).

[the baby and me being sick together is what contributed to the rest of the sleepless night]

I also managed to catch the film Appleseed Alpha (while I was waiting for other programs to come on). I'm a rather lightweight fan of the Appleseed (I've seen three or four films, but that's about the extent of my involvement), but Appleseed has been a major source of inspiration for a couple of my more recent projects (including World War Borg and the recent revamp of Cry Dark Future), and I was pleased as punch to see a new Appleseed, especially one set during the "war days" before the show's protagonists make it to Olympus (the futuristic megacity where most of the 'borged-out crime drama of the franchise takes place).

[y'all know how much I like my cyborg-soldiers-stalking-through-the-ruins-of-civilization settings]

So, yeah...the film animation was mind-blowingly fantastic, and the 'borg-on-'borg violence was great (as always), and I have no issue with the minor rewriting of the Appleseed canon-backstory, and the new characters that were introduced were quite entertaining and well voice-acted (I especially enjoyed Two Horns who would certainly fit in the updated setting of CDF). BUT...

What the Fuck, writers?

The rewrite of Deunan Knute's character was f'ing atrocious. She's wimpy and soft and takes a backseat to Briareos through pretty much the entire movie. Briareos is the focus of the new film (whereas before he's always been Deunan's sidekick) and she was left hanging around as 2nd fiddle till pretty much the end....before getting (literally) dropped on her ass and the focus shifting back to Briareos saving the day. And then the movie ends with him counseling her. What the hell?!

It's mainly irritating because, while I love cyborgs and stuff, what makes the Appleseed series so cool is Deunan as the Alpha-Dog protagonist. She's the Point-Man, the Hot-Head, the Kick-Ass-And-Take-Names-Later character throughout the franchise with giant, uber-competent cyborg Briareos backing her up. She's the one who makes the plans, she's the one who charges first with guns a-blazing...all in a tiny, agile package. It's a charming bit of role-switching that makes the show interesting. There's a lot of cyborg anime out there that I don't watch and that I don't find worth watching (geek dude or not, I'm actually fairly selective about what cartoons I see)...but Appleseed always had brave little Deunan, the badass human who wasn't afraid to stand up to an over-'roided cyborg.

She's like the post-apocalyptic Annie or something.

Now I have no clue why the writers decided to take the character in this direction, but it's totally lame. It feels like the writers are telling Deunen to more-or-less "shut up" through the whole film (via the mouths of Briareos and other characters)...and more-or-less that's what she does. And so despite all the coolness on display, the movie felt slow, stagnant, and definitely anticlimactic. And every time Deunan was on the screen I found myself totally annoyed.

Oh and then her outfit: in what post-apocalyptic world does a merc-soldier bare her midriff like she's on Spring Break?

Glad you brought your kneepads, soldier.

I've been reading a lot of wundergeek's blog, so I suppose I'm a lot more cognizant of the sexualizing of fantasy characters in artwork, but coupled with the watered-down, passive attitude displayed by the protagonist...a character that has been around and beloved since 1985 (I first encountered Appleseed in manga form when I was in Japan, circa 1991)...I found it, well, repulsive.

Even this was better...Twilight 2000 chic.

And that's pretty sad. 'Cause if a lightweight fan like me (who happens to be a straight dude) found it such, what do the long-haul fans think? For me, it ruined what was otherwise a visually stunning movie. Sorry to say.

Totally not cool.

In still other, better news, I should be posting the first installment of my X-Plorers supplement sometime this afternoon. Stay tuned!
: )

Savage Land

Sorry, folks...my internet at the house has been down the last couple-few days, leaving me unable to post and/or rant in my usual fashion. No idea when this will be resolved...this is part of the challenge of living in a "savage land" like Paraguay.

[since January, I have been strongly considering starting a blog specifically about being an American living residing in Paraguay, but my wife has asked that I do NOT, unless it is under an assumed name. She knows there's a lot of negative things I could and would say and she doesn't want it getting back to the folks we know here and offending anyone. I know some of my readers have expressed interest in the subject...sorry, but you won't find any links from this blog anytime soon]

So here I am sitting in what passes for a coffee shop (a hotel restaurant that serves coffee in the morning...people really don't do "breakfast" in Paraguay; and this from a culture that puts egg on everything! Even Washington D.C. has places that do breakfast till 9:30ish...but I'm digressing...again), writing apologetic emails to folks who've ordered books that haven't got 'em yet.

[*sigh*]

Anyhoo, I HAVE been working quite a bit on the "new book," though dammit, it really is almost entirely "new," both content-wise and design-wise. All you people who demanded space opera...fine. I'm doing space opera.

But it ain't B/X space opera...or even Traveller. Which means it's going to need testing...testing that cannot be accomplished in Paraguay unfortunately, as I'm purposefully designing a game that cannot be played "on-line." Which is stupidly obtuse of me, I suppose (given the technological climate of today's RPG crowd)...but acting recalcitrant isn't anything new over at Ye Old B/X Blackrazor blog.

Baron Karza...much scarier than Vader.

*ahem* So, yeah...play-testers will be wanted. Not yet, probably not soon. I've got a bunch of random tables to devise still. But it's coming along. No, it's not Star Wars and it's waaaaay far away from Trek, but it should still have cybernetic replacement because...you know...borgs. If I could find a way to make the Micronauts' "body banks" work with the setting I would. THAT shit is f'd UP...and I love it.

[I'll have to do a post on Ye Old Body Banks sometime. The Micronauts comics went to a lot of "dark places," back in the day. Where's the HBO series based on THAT intellectual property?]

Okay, I'm outa' here for now. Yak at you more soon (hope hope).

Rifts - Duh, Duh, DUH

Let's hate on something different for just a minute.

It's 2am, and I'm having a 2nd glass of wine (after many beers today). O World Cup, you really haven't disappointed this year, what with the 7-1 smack down of Brazil (whom I dislike) by Germany (which is the team I always root for after the U.S. and Mexico are inevitably kicked from the tournament). The wife is out o town (with the baby) and D is asleep and I've just been surfing the blogs and whatnot for the last 90 minutes or so (Bikini Armor Battle Damage on tumblr is pretty funny...and depressing as well).

Rifts...you old son of a bitch.

I was thinking about it this evening, and I have probably spent more of my hard-earned money on Rifts than any other game system in my entire life, including Dungeons & Dragons. One thing about D&D, many of my TSR books were acquired as gifts when I was a youngster (from friends and family for birthdays and Christmas and whatnot), and while I did acquire the 3rd edition core and several of the "splat" (class) books, I really never invested heavily into its other stuff, and a lot of older edition stuff I've picked up was purchased used, or been indefinitely lent by folks.

Rifts on the other hand...well, that's stuff I tend to buy new. And then sell of in disgust. And then re-buy new. Because I have some sort of problem with Palladium games. Really...Palladium is like crack: a cheap high that doesn't last long and is O-So-Bad for you, with nothing really to redeem it. Hell, it ain't even all hard cover and glossy like White Wolf's stuff (I spent a ton of money on Vampire back in the 90's, but things were cheaper than and I never did the sell/re-buy thing)...there's no glamor in a softcover with B&W interior that curls up at the edges.

Palladium system is the ghetto RPG.

It's also the kind of shady drug you don't like to tell people about. I mean, you run into players often enough (Palladium's sold well enough to stay in business this long) but Palladium people always seem a little embarrassed to admit their enjoyment of the game. Fact of the matter is, I've found it hard to even PLAY Palladium games...all the Rifts "campaigns" I've started have invariably  ended after a single session, and I've never known ANY gamers who could really "stick with it"...at least not since high school (and I'm talking freshman/sophomore year high school).

[man...I sure did write a lot of Palladium-related posts back in 2009]

ANYway...

[*pause*]

Sorry...fell asleep. AND woke up late. What was I saying?

Here's the thing...this is what I was trying to get to last night/this morning...here's The Thing: I almost wish (almost!) that Palladium would fold and the game fall from the realms of print so that folks could start "cloning" the hell out of it. Cloning it without the threat of lawsuits.

Of course I do NOT wish the failure of a business on anyone, especially not Mr. Siembieda who has produced so much creative, inspirational work over the decades. This isn't really about hating on Palladium or its policies or its Head Honcho. But, man o man: if Rifts was available for cloning? To take the setting and run it with a system that's a bit more coherent? It would be so damn easy!

I mean, it already has a class/level structure (because Palladium was originally a D&D knock-off/heartbreaker...you're not going to convince me otherwise). It already has D20 combat (if overly complex combat) and hit points and whatnot. The ability scores and adjustments not terribly dissimilar from what you'd find in D&D (duh); tightening the game would be a piece of easy.

Of course, I'm sure a lot of independent publishers were licking their chops at this very prospect during the heyday of D20 and the OGL.

The obvious workaround is the usual one, I suppose...file the "serial numbers" off everything and publish it without using the trademarked IP or copyrighted material. Yeah, easy enough: that's pretty much what I did with Cry Dark Future after all (a cyberpunk-B/X mash-up heavily "reminiscent" of Shadowrun). It's what Bezio's X-Plorers appears to be (with its heavy resemblance of Star Frontiers...though minus the vrusk and dralasites).

But you know, one of the reasons why CDF hasn't actually found its way to publication yet is the sheer degree by which it resembles Shadowrun...and I want it to be a little more different. I mean, it IS different (*sheesh* I have some original ideas...). Yes, I was able to simply and elegantly (I feel) 'port the chargen system (circa 3rd edition SR) into a B/X chassis, but that carries with it the major flaw of the SR chargen system, i.e. the time taken to kit out characters with a high priority in resources (money)...not to mention the all-too-often accounting errors.

And besides: shouldn't a B/X style system really include halflings? Halflings with machine guns (or rocket launchers or bionic limbs) just sound awesome. And much as I like the orc and troll options, aren't those guys supposed to be "monsters?"

Maybe, maybe not. I just haven't had time (or rather taken the time) to work out an original setting for the game...it is nearly entirely derivative from its inspiration. I'm not certain I'm entirely on board with all that 5th World jazz.

And I don't want to make the same mistake again. There is a lot of dumb-dumb stuff in Rifts (or a Rifts-like game). Even adapting Mutant Future (itself almost derivative of its Gamma World source material) doesn't seem right, with its species-specific classes. Not that I object to race-as-class, mind you (and Rifts, too, has RCCs, i.e. "racial character classes")...but the fact that it divides adventurers into Men of Arms (various types), Men of Magic (various types), Scholars & Adventurers (various types), makes the thing just scream for a more traditional D&D type treatment.

Really like the air-powered spear guns.

A long, loooong while ago I was considering the idea of a post-apocalyptic world setting of the type found in the psychedelic PA art of the 60s and 70s. Things like Bakshi's Wizards and Heavy Metal Magazine. Something weird without being gonzo...where "mutant" is an epithet, not a source of X-Man-style superpowers. Dyson Logos did a great series on the (first) animated film, Heavy Metal, and how its disparate stories could be shuffled together to create a coherent and exciting setting for a Mutant Future/Gamma World campaign, and it provided a big push of inspiration...but at the time, I was more concerned with getting my B/X Companion book completed. The idea got dropped along with a lot of other "neat" ones.

[it doesn't help that I get side-tracked by cyborgs...and creating cool game mechanics for cyborgs...every time I get within spitting distance of their possible inclusion. Is my "borg love" a subconscious thing caused by my childhood fandom of the Six Million Dollar Man? No clue]

Now, the idea is back...but Palladium is still there, looming with its massive pile of Rifts "stuff" (ideas, concepts). Ready to pounce with a pack of lawyers at the very whiff of treading on their trademarked toes. Hogging all the post-apoc, mutant-magic mash-up potential.

Except, of course, the concept of such a setting isn't original to Siembieda and Rifts. Post-apocalyptic settings that include both can be found in sword & sorcery fiction. It even found a home on Saturday morning television with Thundarr the Barbarian, my absolute favorite cartoon of all-time (yes, yes, I was a big fan of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon back in the day). I know that Thundarr was adapted to at least one game system ("Under a Broken Moon," using the mechanics from Over the Edge), and maybe Savage Worlds, too. I suppose that a big difference between something like Thundarr and Rifts (besides the obvious) is that Thundarr and its ilk offers no explanation for the emergence of magic in its post-apocalyptic world, while Rifts goes out of its way to create an elaborate justification for the presence of the supernatural...even though the latter proceeds to go all wonky and inconsistent with its various different styles of magic (to make no mention of psychics).

What I probably need to do, instead of filing the serial numbers off Rifts or producing a different spin on Mutant Future, is create my own class/level game set in to post-apoc world. But, dammit, hasn't that already been done before? That's the whole reason why I wrote MDR (not yet available) using the DMI system...because I wanted a post-apoc system that had some heart and something different from the same old, same old fantasy adventurer tropes.

But, man do I love my fantasy adventure tropes.

Ugh. Round and round and round it goes. Maybe what I REALLY need to do, is make a list of all the things I HATE in existing post-apocalyptic games, and then write something that doesn't include those. Hmmm...

Yeah...that's the ticket. Sorry to all my readers that had to wade through the dross of my stream-o-consciousness rambling. I now have a mission.
: )

[congrats to Argentina, BTW...see you in the final]