As I wrote on Archive.org:
Nick Novitski runs Ryo Kamiya's Maid the Role Playing Game for George Austin, Jonathan "Buddha" Davis, Jeff Hosmer, Joe Iglesias, and Nick Marshall on December 17th at The Complete Strategist. We start out talking about playing a Power Rangers game using either Maid or My Life With Master (no joke!), then start rolling on ( Read more... )

So I finally shared the thought I've been kicking around about hacking Fate for "righteous criminals exacting their revenge-type stories." These variations on Spirit of the Century's five phases owe a lot to a post by Leonard Balsera, among other things. The following is excerpted from an email I sent to my gaming group's list explaining what I'd ( Read more... )

Sorry for being so quiet this last week. I've had my head buried in proofreading, among other things.

Quick Gaming Update:

Thanks to Joe, I finally managed to play Over the Edge: Psychosurreal Roleplaying! Finding a copy has been on my to-do list for a while. After last night's game, it's an even higher priority. At the very least I'll beg ' ( Read more... )

So I tried to save some time and effort by using a piece of freeware called Levelator on the Sign in Stranger recordings. The results are mixed:


(Visit the recording's Archive.org page! I wrote things there ( Read more... )

I watched The Girl Who Lept Through Time a few nights ago. It is perhaps the only work by Madhouse that I like without reservation -- excepting, of course, films directed by Kon Satoshi, though even that doesn't always save 'em. Sure, it starts with a textbook cliché... assuming your textbook is Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, and the passage from ( Read more... )

I'm in love with Sign in Stranger's defining feature.

In Emily Care Boss's work in progress you play colonists who've volunteered to leave the Earth forever and live among utterly alien sentients on their bizarre worlds. The various worlds the colonists may choose from are composed Mad Libs-like, by filling in one detail at a time, folding the ( Read more... )

It seems I spoke too soon about the first claim in my last entry.

I was seduced by the siren song of In a Wicked Age and did not join Nick for Agon.  Wow - we had two tables of five players last night!

Anyway, one of the oracle entries I wrote was drawn -- "Upon being released from prison, an ex-yakuza hitman gets embroiled in a plot of love, ( Read more... )

I think the crashes while running Folding@Home that started when ATI's 8.12 drivers came out may finally be over!

We're playing the Torg/IaWA mash-up again tomorrow. The Compleat Strategist's manager, Josh, played with us last time; his character ended up becoming one with the Dalai Lama.  It was a strange evening.

I enjoyed playing with him a lot ( Read more... )

Montsegur 1244 was a pleasure to play and much different from what I expected. The game tasks players to make sense of some of the 200 Cathars who chose to burn at the stake rather than renounce their faith and join the Roman Catholic Church. The mechanics are focused almost entirely on pacing: the game tells you when to stop playing vignettes ( Read more... )

So Joe sent the Thursday Night crew's mailing list links to four posts on Jonathan Tweet's blog on Gleemax. There was one on the storied tradition of gaming group in-jokes, and a pair that revealed to me the influence of Doctor Strange on early D&D art. One in particular, a synecdoche illustrating how novel D&D's appropriation of myth and ( Read more... )