The Autoconveyors of Thrend

All this RPG'ing, in my head anyway, happens in my own little contiguous universe.  The main world is maybe Aereth, I guess, like in DCC.  The other one is Nebulmor, the Tomb World where Space Dungeon takes place. There's a beat up shithole named Rad.  They farm radishes. Sometimes, they are highly irradiated and mutant-rich, some other times they are perched on the edge of a hole (I think one version of it appeared on top of +Daniel Bishop's Silent Night). There's Helleborine, "that town over there", and Marbourg - kind of my "home town".  Floating languidly down the coast is Aubergiole, where men dally with fishy horrors.

The confines of genre are stupid; my things are maybe more like Titan and Magnamund than Faerun or Middle Earth. Where maybe the lines between fantasy and scifi are not as clear as they are now, sort of like in the beginning.

For example, there must be cars. The roads suck, but there are cars since (in theory at least) I love car chases.  And I like the idea of scrounging for gas and parts. And flat tires.  I figure, if you can't smoosh a crummy beater into your imagination zone, you probably wouldn't enjoy the games I run anyways.  Maybe this post is a clear statement of intent.

I think most of the cars must be hilarious, awful, cramped boxes of shit that respond well to tinkering and are immune to the problems we have today in terms of proprietary parts. It occurs to me that having cars means people need driver's licenses and so, High Schools and Driver's Schools must be a thing. I refer you to the thing I recently dropped on Google Plus called Alma Mongrel.

Anyway, here are some of the cars I think do well in my fantasy/sci-fi/post-apocalypse world of Aereth in the Kingdom of Thrend (first named casually in a session but then somewhat codified in The Hounds of Halthrag Keep). When they DO breakdown, it gives you a perfect excuse for an adventure...

Imagine these with ballistae, .40 caliber heavy machine guns, steam and/or nuclear or shoggoth-powered engines... Rowdy paint-jobs, magic hood ornaments, missing pieces, weird gizmos. Screaming down the highway at night, chased by Nightgaunts or a Dracolich.  I don't know.  I guess I don't get to use chase rules enough...

Dystopian Simulation

Working on Actually finished since post was writ, that is I finished this Grand Theft Auto 4 mod project, just trying to capture a certain Half-Life 2/Stalker/Exclusion Zone feel. Maybe Innsmouth? Like a version of Innsmouth from that movie Dagon, in which the town really sucked. I don't mean to say I made a mod, but I collected a bunch and just enjoy driving around in it and watching bad things go down.  Why? I don't know.

Some mods listed below:

Cars:

http://www.gta4-mods.com/vehicles/gaz-m20v-pobeda-f7879

http://www.gta4-mods.com/vehicles/vaz-2103-rusty-f7926

http://www.gta4-mods.com/vehicles/vaz-2103-rusty-second-edition-f7936

http://www.gta4-mods.com/vehicles/vaz-2103-rusty-second-edition-f7936

http://www.gtainside.com/en/gta4/cars/67638-1970-fiat-abarth-695-ss-assetto-corse/

... and a couple of different Fiats

Scripts:

The Simple Native Trainer
http://www.gtainside.com/en/gta4/trainers/49982-gta-iv-eflc-simple-native-trainer-v6-5/download

The Selfie Mod
http://www.gtainside.com/en/gta4/mods/63545-selfie-mod/

The Facial Animation Mod
http://www.gta4-mods.com/player/facial-animation-mod-f29759

Pedestrian Changer

First Person View
http://gtaforums.com/topic/412129-relgtaiv-first-person
 or
http://www.gta4-mods.com/script/first-person-107-compatible-f9171

Then there's this one script in which total war erupts in town and it's cops and gang bangers and drive bys like 24/7 365 and I made sure it's raining and lightning all the damn time and it's not as fun as I thought.

Social interaction Combat

Social interaction "Combat"

Laying in bed. Back all fucked. Thinking about ways to reinforce RP the way that combat encounters are reinforced. Don't get me wrong violence in RPGs is fun but the way it's done is not fun. Maybe a better blog post about this after I think it some more. There are lots of improv games; I mean LOTS. I don't do improv. So I may get off base here. I tried LARPIng once at Camp Nerdly and it literally blew my mind about how different RPGs could be if we had the will to mix it up a bit. I use DCC as a basic thought framework, here, and it makes an assumption that you also add in reaction rolls a la Moldvay and morale rolls in combat (interestingly, I think that morale rolls can be transitioned into the system I am about to propose but hang on cause I need some Tylenol)

Say we wanted to promote Role-play the way that the ritualized combat roll-play gets highlighted in our games.  DCC is great in that it awards 1-4 XP based on encounter risks/costs more than monster power or gold accumulation. A dragon and a major demon and an angry god all gonna award 4. Easy peasey. That's if you kill it; sneak away; trick it; ally with it. Whatever - modified subjectively by the DM.  A friendly God of Partying will not award as much as an Angry God of Partying on account of less risk to the PCs

If we want to promote/reinforce role play, then players, rather than just DM ought to be role playing and expanding and advancing the story at these interactive times. So we need to reward those actions. In a non-combat encounter, a player needs to know motives to do the acting. PCs come with built-in motives. NPCs offer an opportunity for a group to expand the narrative and so if a group wants to Role play/improv and encounter actors and directors are nominated. You get points for rounds where you move the narrative toward your motivation as an PC/NPC but if aren't "acting" then you also get points for expanding on the action for people to use in the role playing. Personally I would give points or bonuses for "selling it" by using dumb voices and body language but that's me

You go a couple of rounds with no cap on length until the group or (optionally) the DM figure its enough. I think an hour of roleplaying/acting in turn in a circle would be as enjoyable (possibly more so) than dicing hits/misses. You can squeeze in mechanics as appropriate (bluff/intimidate) and this offers the opportunity to burn Luck on dicing

More later, maybe. The key is that no one's setting there picking their nose, either you're improving by acting/drama-ing/role-playing, or you are adding to the narrative by introducing/expanding the current action. ("The kobold is thinking that the thigh meet in the elf looks especially luscious" or "little does the party know that a gang of Meazels is around the bend with garrotes if this thing goes south")

Popcorn initiative. Passing is not punished it's just not reinforced with IP (improv points) that round. The IP points are divided up equally so if you pass, the group gets less IP which are converted to LUCK/HP/XP (choose one) at the end of the encounter. Sorry about the Blithering Idiocy, I'm still in bed and in a gray haze of lower back pain

More later. I encourage feedback and thoughts

Edit: makes the assumption that HP are not an indicator of physical condition but of ability to avoid killing blows  a PC with low HP is maybe unscathed but in existential peril, or maybe (according to the player) wounded pretty badly

The Mathom-Making of Calabraxis

Daniel Bishop of the Raven Crowking's Nest, has a great tradition, based on Tolkien's Hobbit practice of Mathom-ing.  A mathom is a gift that the owner doesn't use to the full extent, and is given freely on the owner's Birthday. I forget when Daniel's birthday is, but to get his Mathom this year (as in dusty years gone by) one need only review a DCC thing and link to Daniel's OP

HERE IS MY REVIEW

Hearken, Wayward Traveller!  Have you a need for weird interludes, full of novel critters and strange situations?  Do your adventurers tire of kobolds, dragons, and Standard Template Spells? Well, look no farther - Claytonian's Wizardarium of Calabraxis seems to me to meet your requirements, Mendicant!

It is spilling over from one plane of reality into the next with interesting to fight/roleplay monsters and alien entities, offers strange toys to play with and experiment upon captives with, deadly traps to kill the unwary, and of course an evil and twisted Wizard that is long dead but still haunts the locale...

I admire Claytonian's work, in that the WoC is a thing he made all on his own, including the art.  In addition to writing and layout, he also has contributed artwork to other DCC authors' productions and is a talented visual artist in his own right. In the span of maybe 18 (6x9?) pages, he gives both a bare-framework and rich opportunity of Roleplay and Combat and Explorative play, with a healthy dose of hooks to bring the PCs in.  In addition, it seems to me that no PC that enters will leave the Wizardarium unchanged, and the multiverse itself may open up before them - weird time-travel possibilities and even transmogrification ought to be expected (and to my mind encouraged)

Disclosure: with Claytonian's permission, I incorporated his suggested Psionic power rules into my own solo gamebook as a way to strengthen the network of bonds between DCC authors' individual work, the way that HPL and Smith and Howard did so long ago. Claytonian is an advocate of this position and practice, I think, as all we DIY hobby-publishers ought to be.

YOU MAY FIND CLAYTONIAN'S OPUS MAGNUM HERE

NOW, BRING ME THE HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST AND A MATHOM, UNLESS THE HEAD IS THE MATHOM 

Offending the Elementals

I'm impressed at how often I have random RPG thoughts pop into my head while I am waiting for the dog to take a deuce on our morning/evening rounds.

 

It's Father's Day. My kid is about 4, and since she could walk she has had a bit of an interesting habit, in that she seems to collect rocks. Not special rocks, as far as I can tell, just "nice ones". She almost always has a rock in her pocket when we are out and about. My compulsion, I chalk it up to 35 years of thinking about Dungeons, is to peek into sewer grates and open manholes and drainage sluices. We all have quirks, I guess.

My wife has a fish tank that she fusses over. A good honest hobby. I got to thinking, whilst I prepared to stoop down to pick up some warm dog poo this AM, what if my wife and kid were like offending the Natural Order of The Universe?

Tiny rocks are baby rocks. Rocks start out Old and Awful, mountains with roots and the millennia sheer and crumble them away to helpless infancy. My kid sees a kindred spirit in a helpless stone, and picks up good vibes. My wife has a 5-gallon waterthing that she checks its chemistry and ammonia and the 5 little souls darting around inside. A fish tank is a constrained body of free-flowing fluid, sedated and captured for a human's amusement. Do Grome and Blibdoolploolp take offence?  I hope not. Maybe they dig it as it allows a greater sphere of influence. In an animistic world, every rock and stone is a potential friend and a spy

There are other than the 4 natural elements. Elementals of happiness, moonlight, gravedirt, ironworks, springs, ink; not just the 4 basic or 8 demi-elementals, or the infinite paraelementals. Anything that has a Platonic Ideal can be ripped (un)ceremoniously from There and brought to Here. Pretty common for the animal world paragons to come to The World but rare for elementals of other sorts, and only where the connections are strong

The Paper Elemental often appears on my dinner table. Covered with scribbles and made of unpaid bills and half-read magazines. If one is able to get into the innards of a paper elemental, you can get a level-worth of spells for each physical successful attack one makes, but you're suffocating and being shredded by an infinity of paper cuts each round, so have Protection

The Fishtank elemental has beautiful fish inside and enjoys being fed and given jewelry and when the chemistry is off it gets hateful and murderous and the fish are killed and then whatever it can get to next

I made that one post about the Imbue Spirit spell for DCC - the link should be in the side bar

Gotta get back to Father's Day stuff now this bacon and eggs and coffee are digesting

Hmm Breakfast Elemental. Sleepiness, lethargy, contentment as attacks. You awaken some hours later with nothing done