Discourses on Nerdery

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'Kiss me forever,' I thought. 'Kiss me forever so I don't have to see where the years have taken us and what you've become.'

Stephen King, Revival There’s something devastating and true in the pages of this book. I can’t really get over it. 

[davidpetersenart-blog]

Mouse Guard Role Playing Game 2nd Edition Box Set artwork More info & a process blogpost here: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2014/07/rpg-2nd-edition-boxed-set-artwork.html

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Need now.

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I never see people--I see crazed bundles. Battered suitcases, stuffed to overflowing, cinched shut with belts and frayed twine.

R. Scott Bakker, Disciple of the Dog

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Earthdawn

This is a pitch I gave to a fellow gamer on an RPG that is very near and dear to my heart: Earthdawn. I have some pretty good memories of this game and its outrageously well-developed setting. The actual playing of the game is a series of 'eh' memories, but the game itself is easily in my top three of all time. Honestly, with some revision, the pitch'd be better, but what isn't? It was off-the-cuff and only showed my how much of this damned game I've memorized over the years.  But I love it so. And I've brought more people into the fold! Anyway. There is a place Named Barsaive. Old and steeped in a rich history reaching back over a thousand years. It was a much more vibrant, lively place full of the light of wisdom and towering kingdoms. There was an empire, Thera, that ruled these lands and its people after years of growing need for magical resources. But that was before the Scourge, a time when unearthly, life-hungry Horrors flooded the world from the darkest parts of the Netherworlds and for four hundred years, the world was ravaged and changed as its inhabitants cowered below the earth in magically sealed kaers which protected some, but became the tombs of many as the Horrors were more cunning, more numerous, and more tenacious than anyone had ever predicted.  Magic permeates the whole world of Earthdawn. It literally defines you as a person. Everything has a Pattern. Magical items, your class (called, in and out of game, a Discipline), your Name, all is imbued with magic and your own ability to weave threads. In this world, magical items can grow out of your very own items you carry. Weaving a thread to an item--personal or an artifact of Legend--grows its own Legend or furthers an original one. The whole game is built around your own personal Legend. It grows as you grow and your name goes far and wide across towns, cities, Barsaive, perhaps even the wider, unknown world.  The Namegivers of the world (dwarfs, the most populous and forward thinking; orks, former chattel slaves and reclaiming their lost nation of Cara Fahd; humans, diverse and handy as ever; t'skrang, the flamboyant lizard folk of the Serpent River; obsidimen, the strange and wondrous elemental beings; elves, proud, old, and shattered as a cultural whole; trolls, noted raiders and philosophers; and windlings; two foot tall winged humanoids who find constant joy in all things) sheltered in their kaers and citadels, waiting out the horrors and Horrors for 400 years. The Theran Empire, the literal center of magical might in the world had given them the means to know when the world would become safe again--a simple spell, a ball of True earth suspended over True water, slowly descending as the magical flush of the world faded. Less magic meant less ability for the Horrors to sustain themselves in the world and thus driving them out, when suddenly, 400 years into what was thought to be 500 years of Scourge, the ball in each kaer had suddenly stopped. Hovering an inch over the water, the world's magical field stabilized.  People, cautious at first, broke into a fiercely changed and wounded world. Horrors still skittered about, feeding on the pain and suffering of Namegivers, but this was a world to be retaken. The regain the glories lost and to see the sun again. So, fast forward a century to the present day. War has settled on the land as Thera has come to reclaim its province and the mighty dwarven kingdom of Throal has rallied the province against their tyranny. There are kaers to rediscover; Horrors remain in the ruins of the world, waiting to feed, for souls to take; great national intrigues; a whole world to rediscover in Barsaive alone. What shall your Legend say of you in the centuries to come?

It's a fantastic game with an amazing backstory. Honestly, the first 20 pages of the Gamemaster's Guide, outlining the history of the setting and the conflicts therein and the coming of the Scourge, are worth the price of the books for me.  Not counting the upcoming timeline changes (which are much needed) of 4th Edition, the world had changed greatly after the Scourge.

[snadwich]

speaking of kawaii

[dulok-brains]

[fullergoeseasy]

I need to have this framed and put in my house.

[tractate]

On Hunter: Setting, part two

So, last time we spoke about what worked and didn't work in Roanton and I listed an example NPC that is being re-worked from the ground-up. All of this federates greater cohesion and narrative control on the part of yours truly, the storyteller. Many more options await to bait players into side stories or little one-off encounters to let them know the city thrums with life, albeit an unseemly kind. This is a city infested, like much of the World of Darkness' cities, towns, random trees on the side of the road, all of it. But it isn't exactly a city dominated as the signature cities are.  It's more Chicago in miniature. Chicago being the morass of infighting (WoD factions) that it is in-setting, but between largely human factions (mages, ghouls, and various splat-aligned cults included) who are, to various degrees, "In the Know" about the strange world they live in. Internecine conflict (in this context among mortal men) creates fertile grounds for further calamity -- perfect for the WoD, new and old.  It's a city settled in a barely plausible rim between the Big Apple and Beantown, two nexuses of rather potent means in the WoD--the city of Geists and the city of Mages. Roanton itself is an arbiter between these two great places of American culture. The little city-town funneling tourists from one maw to another. A place of flux, where the chaff escapes the terrors dwelling within capitals, the supernatural runoff.  Roanton, the pit where all sins gather into a well that whispers horror in the dreams of your fears.  Which makes it all too appropriate that starting out in Hunter, men are those in charge of the night in Roanton (more or less). Humanity is the center of the World of Darkness, new and old. They're where our splats are derived from; they're the gilded candles the spirit world flocks around; a strange fascination for the critters of splats, both species and singular.  Men are the biggest boogeymen of all. And sometimes, their horrors simply can't be matched by the critters in the dark. 

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On Hunter: Setting, part one

Ah, Roanton, ye olde homebrew setting.  My homage to Lovecraft's Arkham in the imagined beginnings, Roanton's newest iteration feels a lot more like something that's mine rather than simple derivation. How true that is remains to be seen, I am, after all, a simple hack. Roanton was very slapdash at first, a series of interesting (if out of place) locations smacked together into a city with liiiiiittle bits of Massachusetts flavoring (told you I was a hack) to make it seem 'plausible.'

You can imagine my horror when I found out one of my players was originally from Boston. But she seemed to like it just fine, even asked if I was from the area, which was stupefying. I digress.  Roanton, yes. The Frankenstein that is the city was a poor binding of several ideas. Some which worked (kinda), some which did not. Things that worked (kinda): The Conductor, a spirit that inhabited the local train station; the Crone coterie that dwelt in the woods and took suppliants only on moonless nights; the mannikins (not the Changeling sort); the rumors of Stryx; these things worked as a whole. 

Things that didn't work: The haphazard makeup of the city (maze-like center city, City Hall, the harbor area--for factional purposes, not just the move away from the coast); the Thief-ripoff asylum which was never used; the werewolves which made no sense and never factored into anything or player narrative; the entirety of the city's supernatural nature. It wasn't something I made, but just a color-by-numbers of WoD factions.

This new iteration of Roanton will be a far more cohesive, tightened device for the players. It'll be in northwest Connecticut now instead of Mass. and given a richer, more natural history. Seeing as Hunter will be the focus here the city can have a lot more singular terrors and mortal(ish) foes for my Cell to encounter along with the primary plot arc and MacGuffin.  Roanton, along with the TN town (which is also in dire need of revision), will become a sort of stock setting for me in the WoD and perhaps actual fiction, unless I become wildly enamored of an actual city. I have half a mind to merge this game's version of Roanton with my upcoming Vampire game, but I'm not sure if I want to run it that way or make it earlier in the oughts or present day or just another Roanton altogther. Sometimes I like to do huge, setting altering things, but with the focus of this game it may not be so.  Regardless of those concerns, the city itself will be alive and a little familiar to former experiences with the setting.

Example: The Conductor, for instance, originally a powerful spirit who ruled over a train platform in the city, who could tell anyone a vital secret or presage events to come, is now an entity that exists in the collective minds of the city's homeless, uses them as vessels. It's methods and goals are unknown to every supernatural being and occultist in the city, save that in some odd way it values these disenfranchised peoples.  This feels so much better than the original Conductor, much more apt for player involvement and far, far more interesting to run across in the middle of a tense situation. An enigmatic, free hand in the crazed morass of plots that is Roanton's underworld. It makes things more colorful, I feel.  That's all for tonight. Sleep is needed and more drawing board discussions on setting are taking place in my brain meats. 

[tractate]

On Hunter: Plot

This upcoming chronicle will hopefully be a bit more laser-focused in terms of plot and general horror. I got off to a good clip with Smoke-Darkened Hills, but the plot sprawl and general effects thereof have kind of washed some of that out--a billion plot threads that need to be tied in the end.  So with that in mind, let us consider the plot, MacGuffin, setting, and villains of my upcoming Hunter chronicle. Tonight, we focus largely on plot/MacGuffin interaction and some thoughts regarding horror in general. Rambling thoughts, ho!

Plot: Currently the biggest thing that's being reworked is the MacGuffin, the Dragon's Teeth, due in large part to feedback from potential players. They want that sense of desperation and fighting against the night. Both of which I'd planned to give, it is Hunter after all, but I'm attempting to figure how to ratchet this up without it being a TPK in two days.   Considering that, it becomes rather simple--go back to basics. Heed Lovecraft, heed King: explain nothing. And while it's the most obvious advice, it's something a lot of us (certainly myself included) refuse adhering to. That changes easily enough. The tooth will have a myth (being one of the many fabled teeth of the dragon slain by Cadmus, city-father of Ancient Thebes), and may have a few hints at previous owners or history. The history of objects, specifically in horror, have always been something of a favorite of mine--much like the subterranean histories of cities and towns. Everything has dirty laundry waiting to be aired, and even hinting at that can do volumes to scare the living hell out of a reader or a player. I want to recapture this. So I've virtually dumped the history behind the Teeth, leaving it ambiguous as to their real age, purpose, and origin.  The game is the players, not the plot device. While the tooth will be important, it'll be their story that concerns me. Now, that's a given, that's how I've always run things. It's about their personal stories, resolves, how they justify the monsters THEY become in fighting against the darkness. The Vigil is sacrifice of more than just loved ones and security. It is the ultimate staring into the Abyss game (even more than Mage, oddly). There'll be equal amounts of desperate rear guards, too. They'll get their Greek-tinged horror along with plenty of other weird, singular events that are slowly creeping in my head. The city will be a focal point of strange horrors and other curiosities. More on this when I speak of setting. 

As much as I hate it when authors use this word to describe additions and hints to their worlds, it's sadly apt, limitation and the unknown give horror texture. King once said he regretted all the bullshit biology he placed in Firestarter because it would have been way, way better to simply leave it as something unknown. And I'm taking that to heart again. I'll most likely add that again into my current games, even XCOM.  The rumor-mill will also be something I play up yet again. R. Scott Bakker and George R.R. Martin are perhaps the greatest authors of fantasy who knock the rumor-mills of confusion out of the park. They're the ones I adapted that penchant from, I'm almost certain. I like things that spread, distort, and sow strange seeds for later plots. That and outright lying to keep people on their toes. Sadly, I can't get more into this until we go to setting and villains. But the unknown and injecting uncertainty into the horror aside, the plot itself for Children of Cadmus will be the private horrors of the Vigil at first: the neighborhood subverted, missing children, the terror gripping the city. Then comes the tooth and a seemingly greater, more malevolent something moving in to claim its piece of the player's home city. I hope for the game to be relatively episodic and linked with an overarching plot. 

I want to pare down my sprawl. Give things a sharp focus with just enough on the edges to tantalize, and if players wish to follow it up, then we have more to play with. 

I can usually staple my ramshackle plots together well enough, tie-off most of the dangling plot threads, hopefully with this in mind it'll go smoother this time. Just gotta keep the basics in mind.  Next time, setting! Good old Roanton. 

[tractate]

War endures. As well ask Men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before Man was, war waited for him.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West