...and this one from Judd's Hoover Dam game is the best move ever:

"When you read SPEC OPS MANUAL 053: Psychic Warfare, roll + Sharp:

"It reads like stereo instructions but the stereo is your mind and the music it plays is the act of killing people."

On a 10+, you can take 1 of the following 3:

• +1 forward with any Weird based roll used to hurt or ( Read more... )

Thinking about design features:

• Fantasy Heartbreaker
• Inspired a bit by Avatar (the cartoon not the movie, err, either of the movies! ;) ), as well as Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee
• Stats are sliders which move up and down in response to actual play events
• The world is characterized by the 4 elements - elemental peoples & critters, in various ( Read more... )

 I took a break from D&D this weekend to dive back into my "Legacies" gnostic-fantasy setting - this time taking it forward in time to the "Age of Steam". In addition to an updated version of the Itunes playlist i posted up here a year or two ago, i now have a pretty comprehensive history/timeline written out, not to mention a very lovely map. ( Read more... )

 In yet another TV-related post, i just watched the finale for Dollhouse... which struck me as making a great alternative setting for a classic kind of post-apocalyptic RPG.

You have your zombies, only they're not. You have your killabikers, only they're not either. And, of course, you have your evil corporation who brought about the catastrophe to ( Read more... )

 This post on Story By The Throat is a truly nice breakdown of how the central act of traditional roleplaying is supposed to work.

You're not just making a story: you're bringing a character to life, and allowing that life to be challenged - and that collaboration creates the story, the drama, and the unique joy of rpgs.

It seems to me that you ( Read more... )

 I love Burning Wheel's "Tax" mechanic.

Unlike early RPGs, where a character's finances were tracked in concrete terms, down to the dollar (or copper piece), and most current ones, where wealth is either an absolute rating (as in Reign) or merely another generic trait, BW introduced a numeric rating that would become depleted or replenished directly ( Read more... )

 I just spent a big chunk of the week re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu. (I'm up to season 3, so far.)

It's amazing how many little bits of foreshadowing (or threads that were introduced and later picked up) are present in the background from the very beginning. There are so many background characters - like Amy, Jonathan, Harmony, etc - ( Read more... )

 This idea of Paul Tevis' sounds like a truly awesome idea for an epic fantasy RPG.

I think you could do it in Burning Wheel - start off with a "traditional" adventure as the Princes go off into the land to serve & protect & learn the use and abuse of power, but load every character down with hooks that drive them back to take up the throne (bidden ( Read more... )

My group is starting a new, more traditional, 4e game - including extra characters to round the party out to 4, and possibly some minions later on - and we're doing so in a new setting (as created by the Jonas). We're planning to start small and work our way up, but the basic tenants of the world are already in place ( Read more... )

My second time at Dreamation was even more fun than the first. Doing a good job of scheduling in advance really helped!

Now, the con's still going on as i type this, but i couldn't make it back for Saturday or Sunday this year. Maybe for the next one - Dexcon - i should look into taking the bus; the registration fee pales in comparison to the travel ( Read more... )