So we ran esoterrorists, which got me thinking that I would like to use this for a long-term game.

So I posited a secret history of crime, in maybe a few cities, and considered the place of magic.

Then I let it brew for a week and came up with a campaign framework. Let that serve as a call for players, wait and see what happens for interest.

Using the gilt tag prompted me to go back and look at them.

I'd still like to do sexy Rome. Actually that deserves its own post.

Drink and the Devil had done for the rest strikes me as the best of the ideas from that time. Not that they all weren't good, I think I was just in a horrible place for gaming.

Damn too many of these were good ideas. I hate this utter lack of free time.

I’ve threatened to do this before, and maybe this time it will happen.

I plan on running Esoterrorists. Anyone available Wednesday the 7th? I imagine 4-6 players would work quite well, but I can handle a few more if there is that much interest.

Gumshoes is a game focusing on investigation. Basically it has a version of drama points broken down into flavors (investigation abilities) that drive one’s investigation. Usually having investigation abilities, like Forensic Anthropology, allow you to find the important clue – Quincy always finds the important bit of medical evidence – that allows you to progress along the mystery. You can spend from your pool to basically establish cooler facts, usually to drive character development, which is why I liken the rule to mechanics. The rest of the game (basically fighting, escaping and other stuff) is a pretty standard test system. I appreciate the fact that social skills are mostly bundled in the investigative. You just succeed when it’s appropriate and roleplay away.

Esoterrorists is, as you can tell from the name, an occult investigation game. X-Files and Conspiracy X and the like. I won’t commit to actually using their background for this game, but I doubt that will matter to most folks as it’s a rather generic background of “we all work for a secret society out to keep the insane occultists from making the world more insane” system. Little more than a framework to explain the supernatural and get the characters to where they need to be.

( First draft of a game )

It has been a long time since I've run for people, and perhaps 6 years since I've last run Ars Magica, but this seems to be the game that has been sticking with me the longest, so its time to see if there is interest.

I’ve been reading off and on the Gumshoes game, Esoterrorists, and I think I’d like to give it a try. Anyone available next Wednesday (17th) or Friday (19th)? I imagine 4-6 players would work quite well, but I can handle a few more if there is that much interest.

Gumshoes is a game focusing on investigation. Basically it has a version of drama points broken down into flavors (investigation abilities) that drive one’s investigation. Usually having investigation abilities, like Forensic Anthropology, allow you to find the important clue – Quincy always finds the important bit of medical evidence – that allows you to progress along the mystery. You can spend from your pool to basically establish cooler facts, usually to drive character development, which is why I liken the rule to mechanics. The rest of the game (basically fighting, escaping and other stuff) is a pretty standard test system. I appreciate the fact that social skills are mostly bundled in the investigative. You just succeed when it’s appropriate and roleplay away.

Esoterrorists is, as you can tell from the name, an occult investigation game. X-Files and Conspiracy X and the like. I won’t commit to actually using their background for this game, but I doubt that will matter to most folks as it’s a rather generic background of “we all work for a secret society out to keep the insane occultists from making the world more insane” system. Little more than a framework to explain the supernatural and get the characters to where they need to be.

Its time to get the next game up and running for the tantaene group. I wrote about some of this a while back on 20x20. Right now I have three game concepts:

• Alexander's March: Alexander has charged you with completing his greatest dream. Or to die trying.


• Pirates of the Midnight Gulf:Swashbuckling Space Opera in a transhuman dream gone wrong


• The Lost Generation: Pulp Mythological craziness

I really like all three concepts and 'd be happy to play any of them. I'm hoping my players like one!

I'm starting to think about what I want to see the tantaene group to play next. Or what I'm willing to run for them. Some of the meta stuff I'm thinking I wrote on 20x20, so please go and read that first.

( Okay, you've read it? )

peaseblossom has been reading a lot of Shakespeare, and like everything else she does it bleeds over into my consciousness. Of course my personal filters see it through gaming and eliptony, I just can’t help myself.

So this is what I’m thinking. A LARP where everyone are actors with a role in one of the Bard’s plays. The LARP has as its framework rehearsing 2 scenes, and we will actually do a rehearsal for those 2 scenes. The gender issues would be pretty easy to handle. Women can be men playing women, or women pretending to be men (pretending to be women) and what-have-you.

The twist (here’s the eliptony) is that everyone is a representative from one of the weird-theories that have conglomerated around the bard. Catholic spies and faeries and freemasons and reptoids. Time travelers and witches and Bacon’s men. Everyone wanting their slice out of poor Shakespeare.

peaseblossom told me that jadasc had once played in a LARP where soliloquies were part of the game. I’d totally want to use that to express internal landscape with some “reality” shaping ability.

Unfortunately I feel very out of touch with the LARPing community, been ages since I’ve been all that active and I feel like I should get up to speed with the state of the art before I try to run one again.

jeffwik leant me The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, an eighth Doctor Who novel. But I don't really want to talk about that.

Doctor Who is one of those pivotal shows or me, it is probably the first thing I was ever a fan of, and as a franchise and mythos it still holds a great deal of love from me. Not enough that I've seen any of the 9th doctor episodes (I should, folks seem enthusiastic about them). So, like anything else that interests me sooner or later my thoughts turn to gaming.

One could argue that I'm in a Dr Who inspired game already, but because worldofire started as something different it just doesn't seem very Who-vian to me. Part of that may be my ignorance of the 8th Doctor novels which seems to be a major inspiration for Faction Paradox material that is inspiring Jeff.

So this is how I'd do Dr Who. ( Read more... )

One of the things about Everway (old game from WotC written by J Tweet) is you take some art and come up with the character. The box set had some interesting art, but since I’d never run it in that universe I have to be creative, though probably not original.

My game idea is a cross-time game of stomping the memetic fascists (why yes I might have read too much Ellis and Morrison lately, why do you ask?)

Character creation goes like this. Choose 5 words. Go to Google Images and type that word and “Fascist”, search, choose an image from the first page. Get all five images and make up a character background.

It’s a regular happening in my friend’s circle, the whimsical "Games I’d Like to Run”. I’ve done it myself, probably more than once.

This time around I’m not going to play. Not because I don’t have games I’d like to run, but because I’m rather sure any game concept I care about running will get run sooner or later (my ego knows no bounds) and instead I want to list the types of games I want to play in. because not enough people run games I want to play in and I demand they start doing so. As I said, my ego knows no bounds.

These are all games I want to play. Not run. I’ve tried to be as vague as possible to allow someone who wants to run the game for me as much latitude as possible. I considered saying names, but decided against it.

Time slowly slips backwards: This is a time travel game/SF game where the characters are a group of rebels from the future who are moving backwards in time trying to change the world enough so that they’re view of utopia happens. Time travel is one-way (backwards) so the characters are never sure that what they are doing is working and have to rely on their theoretical frameworks and models. Each story would have different antagonists as the new “future” tries to stop them from doing/making the changes they strive for to get to their view of Utopia. A game filled with memes and clio-workings, and nanotechnology. I’m not sure what the best system would be.

Bridge of a Thousand Flowers: Occult intrigue in Ming China. I love Ming China with its economic and social revolutions, a native dynasty and all the rest. And I’m sure one could tell an immensely creative occult game during this era. Basically I want Cabal but with Taoist inspirations instead of decanic.

In the Beginning there was the Word A story within a story within a story game, in the spirit of the Arabian Knights but set during a Mabinigion era (why, because I crave some Welsh craziness). The players are all scheming bard/druids working to change reality through their stories. Everyone would have a bard and then a character in each story and there would be mechanics to handle the webs between story-worlds.

Hunting for Relics: This is probably the closest to dungeon crawling I’ll ever get. I want to play Indiana Jones 1000 years after the collapse of a magic-based Transhuman society.

Thunder in the Skies: I want to play a game set in the 1920s were the characters are all barnstormers and their entourage traveling America. I want mystery. I want pulp. Maybe I want occult goings on. Okay maybe I always want occult goings on.