It’s almost RPGaDay time again; the time of year when folk all over the blogs and social media do their bit to spread positive waves about role-playing games and generally share their experiences of playing, GMing, and thinking about games.
As always, I’ll be making an attempt to follow along with the daily posting schedule. This usually results in life getting in the way, and all of my answers arriving in unwieldy lumps towards the end of the month.
Perhaps this year will be different?
Filed under gaming, RPGaDAY2018
Bil (one L) and Crob were married at the second siege of Redraven. It hadn’t been the plan for either of them but fog of war and such—disparate cultures meeting on the field, warriors clashing in the fury of the press, the smoke and steel and cries and blood—these things were bound to happen sure as not.
Battle, as the wise-heads were wont to say, it is a complicated beast.
Attempting to move my wordpress blog to my pre-existing web-hosting with a different provider.
So far it’s going well. Although I’m not convinced I have everything pointing in the right direction as yet. No doubt it’ll all shake out over the next day or so.
Eventually it’ll have the old web address but at the moment I have this alternative ‘brokentoys’ one. Maybe. I dunno. Some things seem to already link just fine using the old address, other things/devices…not so much.
Filed under Uncategorized
Things went off the rails for a while as I injured my back slightly and sitting at a computer (or indeed doing anything much at all) became something of a jaggedy pain for several weeks. Not fun.
Managed to get some stuff done amidst the ensuing doldrums.
Gaming
There was no Achtung Cthulhu since the last episode I mentioned. There should be plenty more to come though, as the scenario we have embarked on is rather long and we have barely scratched the Italianate marble surface.
The game that was called Mortal is now called Decadence and there’s even character sheets. The rules continue to coalesce around the essential everything-off-one-die-roll and pride-is-key central concepts. I ran a session of the game set in a different (earlier) time period to the ‘Russia 1917’ first outing, and it featured a lot more combat, which enabled much discussion and resolution about how the nitty-gritty of vampires fighting mere humans should work.
The return to OSR gaming finally happened, with a week of character creation and background detail, and then it was off to Dolmenwood to see the sights and try and avoid getting instantly killed by something horrible.
A change to the usual set up this week, as we start with:
Console Gaming
Could have been PC gaming but despite having purchased the Brothers in Arms 3-game collection at a very low price, I completely failed to install it on my PC. I was distracted by the equally cheap and even more hectic Battlefield 4 on PS4, in which I have achieved very little so far; beyond marvelling at the pretty graphics and the sheer amount of ammunition expended.
Gaming
Achtung Cthulhu continued to happen. The characters investigated some suspicious goings on in Rome, and managed to avoid launching an infiltration mission that would most likely have ended in a fascist bullet-storm and many, many allied fatalities.
Filed under Uncategorized
Back with more waffle about what I’ve been up to lately, in a vague attempt to build up a blogging habit.
Gaming
The proposed launch into OSR did not happen as planned, due to unforeseen circumstances for one of the players, and there was a short discussion about what the rest of the group should do instead. In the end, I decided to run a session/play-test of my fledging ‘game about vampires, and stuff’.
Filed under Amazing Tales, gaming, Mortal, photography, RIME, Uncategorized, writing
The plan was to do a bit more blog stuff this year, keep things ticking over, stay up to date with gaming and writing projects as the weeks and months went on. So, that’s going well…
Gaming
Anyway, the gaming group have just finished a short, scrappy, some might say cursed, sequence of Cyberpunk games. Like the 2020 game itself it was all Very 80s. Rogue cops, a dodgy Doc, a media-babe with a bunny-girl makeover.
There were drugs, high technology corporate sleaze, old (dead) friends, sentient computers and surprisingly little gunplay.
Due to a restricted time frame it ended like a one-season television show cut off in its prime. Our heroes, mid-heist, discover they’re hacking the wrong computer and then:
Filed under Achtung Cthulhu, Cyberpunk 2020, gaming, Mortal, writing
I had a dream about people turning into cows. Not actual cows, more a kind of Gerald-Scarfe-Pink-Floyd-video grotesquery of lumpen bovine humanity. It starts with the hands and feet, maybe, becoming useless club-like stubs at the ends of spindly limbs. The rest of the body is bulked out, the epidermis peeling away to leave dun coloured patches of blubbery flesh. The face is elongated, snout like, the ears are curved protrusions of stretched skin. In a certain light I guess they do look more like pigs? But in the dream they called them cows at first and that name sort of stuck.
It’s not a localised event. It’s a worldwide phenomenon; a social crisis and a health catastrophe. How does the world respond? How do family and friends cope if it happens to a loved one? What do you do if it begins to happen to you?
I woke up before that part of the dream unfurled itself. In many ways that’s a blessing.
Filed under Uncategorized, writing
Question 31: What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?
In terms of the gaming community, I’ve no real idea as I basically just noodle away doing whatever gaming is available and pay very little attention to the wider gaming fellowship beyond what passes before my gaze on Facebook or the occasional blog.
Personally, I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on new Runequest, new Stars Without Number, and also a game about language called Dialect.
Going to attempt to run Lamentations of the Flame Princess at some point as I have a scenario in mind that I want to try out, with a view to some future vague attempt to get it published maybe.
More space games, more super-spies, more all round fun and mayhem. Just keeping the momentum going really.
And reminding Stephen Herron that he needs to publish more stuff for Broken Rooms.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDay2017
Question 30: What is an RPG genre-mashup you would most like to see?
Urban fantasy and anthropomorphic animals. I think that would be cool. I have an idea for a novel ticking over at the moment (called The Crow Boy, there’s bits of it scattered about this blog), which features magic, steampunk style crazy science, old gods and new deities; all wrapped up in a tale about birds and cats and surly rats. I think there’s probably a game there too.
Other options for mash-ups:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer…in space!
And also something which is probably best described as a cross between Harry Potter and the Battle of the Somme.
Filed under gaming, RPGaDay2017, writing
