Shortly before going to bed last night, I saw a thread on Story-Games about cobbling together an RPG based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics.

Result: Last night, I dreamed that I was reading the sixth Scott Pilgrim book, and there was a bit where one character says of another, “She decided not to show up since she’s already got two ( Read more... )

Everyone who plays RPGs oughta go read Dylan Horrocks’s short comics story, “The Physics Engine”. I’m especially thinking of jimhenley and bruceb here.

You could make a great character- or scenario-generation system for a role-playing game by just picking one item from each category on the Periodic Table of Awesoments. I’m thinking some kind of Primetime Adventures game where you’re running a bad ’70s action TV show. “OK, So I’m Mister T with a Rocket and a Battle Axe, in Space, fighting Alien ( Read more... )

Looking through some old Alarums & Excrusions zines, I found the following in a comment I wrote back in May 2002:

Actually, I’ve got some ideas about running a Ranma-like game, and they require some different mechanics. […] At the core is a token mechanic, where each character has disads that he can trigger (or that can be triggered by other ( Read more... )

I’ve been hankering for more gaming in my life, so when I heard that NerdNYC was having a gaming get-together within walking distance of my home, I couldn’t miss out. (Though I didn’t actually walk, since it was raining.)

I played one game of Jungle Speed, a tense twitch game that relies on fast pattern-recognition skills. I’ve played it before ( Read more... )

Via jimhenley, here's the table of contents of Green Ronin's book Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Titles I own (or have owned) are in bold, titles I've played are in italic, titles I've both are both:

( Big long list )

LPJ’s Choice and Blood is a d20 Modern supplement about abortion, centering on the conflicts around abortion clinics. It includes new intermediary classes like Clinic Defender, Sidewalk Counselor, and Blogger, and its new feats include Flash Mob, Medical Immortality, and Street Demonstration.

It’s a 24-page PDF, and it’s not free; I’m not sure ( Read more... )

Something that popped into my head this afternoon while crossing Herald Square to buy Trauma Center: Star Trek would make a pretty good variant Dogs in the Vineyard setting. It’s got the basic format down - character go from place to place encountering problems, indoctrinating the locals into their belief system (interplanetary bourgeois liberalism ( Read more... )

Thanks to lumpley, I’ve heard about The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, a narrativist RPG set among the faculty of a small northeastern college in 1919, that asks the question Are you willing to swallow a soul-eating telepathic insect bent on destroying human civilization if it will get you tenure?Not cool enough for you? How ’bout this: No gamemaster. Also, you can ( Read more... )

I’m halfway through Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, which was recommended as a good inspirational source for Dogs in the Vineyard. And it is, even though the Mormons in the book are the bad guys. There’s a strong faithful-versus-the-unfaithful plotline, with a Mormon Elder organizing his community to interfere with a powerful businesswoman ( Read more... )