Get your mind off the news. Post brain bleach and happy thoughts in this open thread. No MRAs, etc. allowed.
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We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The MammothGet your mind off the news. Post brain bleach and happy thoughts in this open thread. No MRAs, etc. allowed.
I’ll definitely let you know how it goes.
I don’t actually know if Move By Wire stacks with Wired Reflexes. I suspect it doesn’t – initiative pass boosters don’t generally stack – but simply the fact that we can have this discussion highlights everything that is wrong with Shadowrun as writter.
*cracks whip* I roll to seduce.
@Orion
Thanks to the power of the internet a group of friends and I who’ve never touched tabletop roleplaying before (except for our DM) are happily playing D&D together. I tell you, roll20.net is a thing of beauty for the socially reclusive and awkward because it’s all right there on our computers.
Unrelated to the gaming discussion, but I completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in 10 hours and 28 minutes today! My best-case scenario, shortest time estimate was 10.5 hours, so I’m pretty proud of myself.
I am going to be playing Traveller this evening! In a bar! In a nerd bar! That keeps dice behind the counter!
I am going to get my character shot because he doesn’t combat good, but we’re boarding a villainous vessel we disabled last session and nobody else in the group speaks Psychic Space Commie.
Welll, on the topic of RPGs, I heartily recommend Apocalypse World and it’s descendants to anyone interested in such things. Apocalypse World is still my personal favorite, but Dungeon World is the most popular and well known one. Check ’em out if you haven’t heard of them! I’d say more, but I’d go on too long. 🙂
Total shameless plug but if you’d like something soothing with cool music, check out my latest story review about Transistor:
That game is art, I tell you, ART!
Nice! After joining the scene I quickly learned that “BDSMer = sex nerd” and I was ever so pleased :P. I’ve spent this week recovering from THE massive BDSM street fair that happened recently (I don’t want to give away too many clues to my location but you probably know exactly what I’m talking about)
Oh, you went, Moocow? How was it?
And yes, Transistor is totally art.
Ooh, RPG conversation. *pricks up ears*
One of my friends made a new song – in his vimeo videos he often does a little “making-of” at the beginning so you can hear the different instruments separately and see how he makes some of the recording effects. (This is pretty chill, calming music, but he does a bunch of different styles.)
@Jackie – thanks for the story! I think a rather apathetic vampire plus a sort of 28 Days Later scenario is an interesting mix. It intrigued me that the vampire was calling people “it” and I wondered is he the kind of vampire that used to be a person, or some kind of always-a-vampire creature?
(I still can’t figure out how to navigate Tumblr though. Are there forward and back buttons, or is every post once you click on it sort of in a world of its own? Apologies for my stupidity in that regard.)
There’s been some good news here. Positive resolution to company problems.
Basically, new investors kicked out the CEO for mismanagement and, after making noise about employee ownership, tried to sell us to another company. Local management had no faith in the new potential owner, so they made a counteroffer, then proceeded to work with the new CEO, getting rid of the waste and bringing us closer to projected profitability. New CEO manages to alienate everyone badly enough that the investors pulled the offer, and then sold it to us employees instead.
So we’re still alive, looking forward to profitability in the near future, and no longer worried about flaky bosses. Hooray!
@EJ
It was awesome! HUGE crowds, lots of gorgeous people of all genders. I had a bunch of friends working in various booths so I tried to find most of them. Got to see some pretty spectacular scenes and then we helped host an ‘aftercare party’ at one of the venues. Everyone was pretty exhausted by that point but it was a good time nonetheless!
Next time I will not be making the mistake of buying food at the fair. Way too expensive and there were much more deviant things to spend money on anyways.
Glad you had a good time! It sounds awesome.
There’s no food quite as good as deviant food though. In my experience the incidence of good cooks amongst kinksters is vastly better than amongst the population as a whole.
Perhaps it’s just that the sort of people for whom sex involves three hours of hard work and lots of instruments, take the same attitude towards their food.
brian,
Is there a specific AW descendant you would recommend? I’ve had good results playing Apocalypse World, but I feel that that game works as well as it does (or at all really) for extremely specific reasons that most copycat designers don’t understand. (Honestly, I’m not convinced Vincent Baker understands why AW works)
I’ve been super disappointed with all the other *world “hacks” and with off-brand games inspired by it (looking at you, blades in the dark).
*all the others that I have read rather.
Hm… I’ve only done pathfinder and a tiny bit of Dresden, so RPGs are still pretty fascinating.
I thank dog that I didn’t encounter them in high school or while working on my undergrad, because they are nerdy and wonderful and somewhat ridiculous.
I’m not a fan of Apocalypse World. I feel that the great asshole savant of game design, Frank Trollman, was pretty much dead on when he said that the winning move in Apocalypse World-alikes is to do nothing at all, which is antithetical to people having fun.
@Katz, so far we’ve spent three or four sessions designing our ship, and we finally got paying work, and I rolled to calculate a jump, and bricked it, and we ended up jumping three times as far as our max jump.
Then we ran into a random villain ship, beat them handily, and we’re busy boarding them. There’s a possibility that the CO can get into our brains.
EJ: I’d like to hear more about why you think AW doesn’t work. It’s my favorite RPG since Unknown Armies!
Orion: I can’t really recommend any specific descendants as, while I own many, I’ve only actually run AW itself. DW is very successful though, so clearly a lot of people are finding it works well. I’m just not a huge fan of that kind of standard D&Dish theme, which is the only reason I haven’t run it.
Monsterhearts is very well regarded, and I’ve have run it if I had friends more into the “teenage monster sex drama” concept.
Incidentally, Vx is currently working on a second edition of AW which I am eagerly awaiting (and already using some of the rules from in my current AW game).
I had to quit my RPG group after one of the other characters decided to attack mine in the middle of combat because we went a different way in a dungeon than he wanted to go, and then the GM wanted us to settle our dispute in-character. Apparently everyone else in the group wanted to have a campaign where everyone constantly squabbles and that’s called “character development.”
@brian, I could rant for a while, but in brief: AW’s quantum-world convention simply doesn’t work, in my experience. It allows more experienced and confident players to run roughshod over newer and less confident ones, and makes information gathering a risky activity rather than a beneficial one.
Good call on Unknown Armies though. That’s probably my favourite RPG ever. The two campaigns of it that I’ve run were an absolute blast and I would salivate over the chance to play it again.
@katz: Run us something. Or get one of us to run something.
@Katz,
Ouch. That’s obnoxious. 🙁
Been thinking about this Legend campaign where the planet has blown up and now it’s a bunch of floating islands. Or this Indiana Jones-style Savage Worlds campaign where you explore Hell. Not very far along planning either one, though.
Since we’re talking RPGs and I don’t really have anyone around to play, I’ll toss out a few ideas.
A group of modern day mages wake up in an abandoned warehouse with a ritually murdered corpse and gaping holes in their memories.
Small town miners have unearthed what appear to be the gates of a long forgotten undercity. Emissaries and explorers are now swarming the once quiet village hoping to get a piece of the action.
Something Star Wars themed: A group of smugglers working the fringes of Imperial space
The homeless population in a large city is suddenly in rapid decline. The last group looking into it suddenly disappeared, so you’ve been called in to solve both mysteries.