Sat, 28 Jun 2008
Another of the roleplaying games I played over the July 4th holiday was Buggin', . This game had T.B. as a scorpion named Scorp; T.A. as Dragon the dragonfly; M.A. as a pillbug, Bill the Pill; my borther A.B. and his youngest O.B. teamed up to run Bob the cyborg grasshopper [2]; E.A. as an Aunty the Ant; and L.B. as Maria the bee. Several of these characters had been played in earlier games of Buggin'.
The characters, having done some troubleshooting for the local ant colony in the past, were assigned to find out why communication with a neighboring ant colony had stopped. They escaped an Ant Lion trap, lots of fun was had with the ant lion throwing sand at the PCs and the flying PCs trying to rescue the non-flying ones who'd fallen in the trap. They made a new trail around the trap and moved on. They found the neighboring ant colony deserted, passed through the strangely rectangular rooms and corridors of the lowest levels, found the huge cubic room and black floating rectangular monolith, climbed up the ledges and across the bridge and passed oddly through the black monolith, to find themselves huge jellyfish-like creatures floating in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, where they set about building cities for new homes, along with lots of other jellyfish-like creatures.
And then they woke up, and found themselves back to normal and remembering the Ant Lion trap as the only problem with other colony. And then they woke up, and they were Jellyfish Colonists on Jupiter again. And so forth.
Some of the kids thought this was funny, and others thought it was just strange. M.A. thought it was really neat.
L.B. was very worried that those characters would be constantly flipping back and forth between being Jellyfish Colonists on Jupiter whenever they went to sleep, so I assured her that it was just for this one game.
Remarks
I find that Buggin' is less work for me to run than Toon. The system is simpler, a character sheet and the character creation rules all fit on one page of paper [1], and I don't have to worry about making things funny, since the genre doesn't require humor (although the players usually add plenty of it themselves). It's usually pretty easy to come up with adventure ideas on the fly, since the genre is ubiquitous in TV and movies; I'd still find an adventure generator useful for inspiration, though.
| [1] | ... which is a goal of the 1 Page Game system used in Buggin' and the other 1PGs from Deep7 and its partners. |
| [2] | In the very first Buggin' game I ran N.A.B. created a grasshopper, Bob. During the course of the game he lost his arm. At the end of game the ant colony “repaired” him, and he ended up with a cyborg arm. He also ended up with a pair of Frankenstein bolts on his head. |
Fri, 27 Jun 2008
My brother who lives out of state usually comes in from out-of-state twice a year, once during the summer and once at Christmas. One of his sons is old enough to play Savage Worlds these days, and since I'd given him, along with rest of the kids who were old enough, their own copies of the Savage Worlds: Explorer's Edition I wanted to make sure we got to play some roleplaying games while they were in town, especially Savage Worlds.
Running for kids is a lot different than running for adults. One of the kids is in his middle teens, but the rest of them are under 11 and one is 6. They're very enthusiastic when they're interested, but if things slow down the younger ones (literally) wander off until things speed up again. They also have sometimes have a little difficulty switching between the neat stuff that is happening and the mechanical stuff we're using to make the neat stuff happen, which can make things take longer than it should. They all enjoy it, though, and it's definitely worth doing.
Sometime I'd like to make some character sheets specifically for the younger kids who don't read very much yet, with pictures of, for instance, their sword and the dice they need to roll to attack and do damage with it.
One of my nephews is very into a particular collectable card game, and we didn't get a chance to play it this summer. Maybe at the Winter gathering.
Schismatrix Plus, Bruce Sterling
I figured out part way through this that I actually read this before. (Or rather, the Schismatrix part of it, since it's a collection of a novel and some related short stories.) Looking back at my log, I'd actually read it recently, just 3½ years ago. Worth rereading, though. I found them thought provoking.
Powers of Two, copyright 2004 by Tim Powers, NESFA Press, 2004; ISBN: 1-886778-51-5.
The Skies Discrowned, copyright 1976 by Tim Powers, published by Laser Books; republished in slightly different form as Forsake the Sky by Tor Books, 1986.
- Epitaph in Rust, copyright 1976 by Tim Powers, published by
Laser Books; republished in corrected form as An Epitaph in Rust by NESFA Press, 1989.
These early novels by Tim Powers show little of the reality twisting genius of his later novels, but were still enjoyable.
Tue, 24 Jun 2008
Planetary: Archaeologists of the Impossible, Book 1: All over the World and Other Stories; writer: Warren Ellis, Artist: John Cassaday, Colorist: Laura Depuy with David Baron and WildStorm FX; copyright 2000 Wildstorm Productions; originally published in magazine format as Planetary #1–6 and Planetary Preview, copyright 1998, 1999 Wildstorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics; ISBN 1-56389-648-6.
It's been quite a while since I've read anything approaching a superhero comic with any regularity. This is probably as close as I've come. Very good. I'll probably have to find and read the rest of the compilations.
The Bible Repairman, copyright 2005 by Tim Powers; Subterranean Press, 2nd printing; ISBN 1-59606-046-8.
A slim pamphlet, containing one of Tim Powers' typically weird stories.
A Soul in a Bottle, copyright 2006 by Tim Powers; Subterranean Press, 1st edition, 2006; ISBN 987-1-59606-075-3.
A slim book with another of Tim Powers' typically weird stories.
Sat, 21 Jun 2008
We got to play Toon a week before the July 4th holiday week.
Part 1: Character Creation
On Staturday the kids made characters while I used one of the Toon Adventure Generators to generate some adventure ideas and looked for interesting NPCs in the Toon books. T.A. created a helpful ghost named Jim and took ghostbusters as his natural enemies. I'd rolled the location to be a haunted house, so I told L.B. and E.A. they were ghostbusters and gave them a ghost trap and proton guns, and told T.A. that he was one of the ghosts haunting the house, a former sailor, “Salty Jim the Ghost” [1]. T.A. was worried that L.B. and E.A. would spend the whole time ganing up on him [2], so I told him that they would initially be at odds, but later they would have to cooperate. E.A. created Tanny the Ballet Bunny and took gardeners as her natural enemy, so I added a garden and gardener/caretaker to the haunted mansion, although they didn't get used very much. L.B. created Nicole the Chameleon. I decided they be facing an alien invasion and the Dough Boys would be the minions of the aliens.
Part 2: The Haunted Mansion
On Sunday we actually got to play. The ghost and the ghost busters spent some time trying to make each other fall down, destroying much of the foyer of the haunted mansion and turning up a plaque holding the spirit of Prof Winterbottom, the missing owner of the mansion, who in the course of a world spanning career had collected an enormous collection of weird items from all over the globe and then disappeared mysteriously. Once the initial player-vs-player slapstick had wound down I had a delivery truck crash through the front porch [3] and dump a load of cylinders of bread dough through the front door of the house, which burst and combined into Dough Boys from the Toon rulebook. The PCs then fled down a long corridor (on roller skates?) and crashed down the steps into the basement. I decided that the aliens would be extra-dimensional octopus-faced Cthulhuoid monsters called “pluggoths” named for their odd special effect of squeezing through any aperture (doors, mystic portals, etc.) as if it were a plughole only an inch in diameter. The pluggoths were using The Dough Boys to open a portal to to Earth in the basement of Winterbottom's mansion, since it was the only building with the necessary density of weirdness, and planning to launch their invasion using the house as a base. Luckily the PCs were hiding in the basement, and after the aliens did their inevitable gloating and explanation of there plans to conquer the world and suck out everybody's brains, it was up to the PCs to foil their schemes and save the world. After some entertaining efforts by T.A.'s Salty Jim using bottles from the wine cellar as simultaneously triggered cork-guns and playing on the octopus-faced pluggoths' fear of fishermen things moved on to a climax. E.A.'s Tanny the Ballet Bunny had, unbeknownst to me, taken dynamite one of her possessions and in a move echoing all those desperate Call of Cthulhu characters proceeded to set an explosive trap for the pluggoths and the Dough Boys. Unfortunately, she failed her Set/Disarm Trap roll and the resulting explosion completely destroyed the entire mansion, flinging the PCs and Prof. Winterbottom's plaque high into the air. Luckily the pluggoths and their extra-dimensional portal did not survive the blast. All the PCs Fell Down, and Tanny fell down out of the sky through the Gardener's chimney and right into his stewpot. The End.
Remarks
I find Toon to be difficult to run: I feel a lot of pressure to keep up the wacky slapstick humor we're familiar with from Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner, or Tom and Jerry, and frankly that's hard. Moreover, I find it hard to think up things to do. Thank goodness Toon has a number of “Adventure Generators”; they really help me come up with ideas. In any case, this episode became more and more a slapstick Bugs Bunny cartoon Call of Cthulhu episode as it went on, with creepy voices and noises and villains whose ambitions were only overmatched by their slapstick weaknesses: I worked hard to keep things at a Scooby Doo [4] level of creepiness, saving only that the monsters weren't people in disguise but silly cartoon creatures. I was aiming at Bugs Bunny visuals and Scooby Doo creepyness factor, but not forgetting the Tom and Jerry slapstick and the Scooby Doo chase scene goofiness.
I wonder if Toon would be easier or harder with adult players?
| [1] | T.A. wanted to make sure that his character could be other kinds of ghosts in other games, which I thought fit in well with the many examples of recurring cartoon characters taking on different roles in different episodes, so I assured him that the “Salty” part of “Salty Jim the Ghost” was only for this episode. I also gave him some temporary Shticks to help his ghost role. |
| [2] | T.A.'s very much into hack-n-slash and kill the monsters, and like the other kids hasn't internalized Toon's Tom-and-Jerry-like “conflict between players is fun” attitude, yet. |
| [3] | Who needs a man with a gun to burst through a door, when you can have a whole truckload of bread dough cylinders burst through and explode? |
| [4] | The first three seasons of Scooby Doo only, thank you. |
Mon, 16 Jun 2008
The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, copyright 2007 by Kim Newman; MonkeyBrains Books; ISBN 1-932265-27-9.
A delightful collection of alternative reality tales from Kim Newman. I wish the predecessor was available for a reasonable price.
Sat, 14 Jun 2008
Jerico Moon, copyright 1998 by Matthew Woodring Stover; ROC/The Penguin Group, April 1998; ISBN 0-451-45678-5.
An excellent historical fantasy.
Sun, 08 Jun 2008
Strange Itineraries, copyright 2005 by Tim Powers; Tachyon Publications, 1st edition 2005, 3rd printing; ISBN 1-892391-23-6.
The back proclaims “The Complete Short Stories of Tim Powers”; I rather hope they're wrong, as I'd love to read more short stories by Powers.
Tue, 03 Jun 2008
- Iron Dawn, copyright 1997 by Matthew Woodring Stover; ROC/The
Penguin Group/, May 1997; ISBN 0-451-45590-8.
There isn't nearly enough fantasy set in the history of the real world being written in the current era. I actually like this better than his more recent SF.
Sun, 01 Jun 2008
One of the things I'm trying to do this summer is to actually run and play more roleplaying games. I play every month or so with an adult group, though that has slowed down during the summer due to scheduling conflicts, and usually play once every month or two with my daughter and my niece and nephews, but I'd like to play or run more often.
I'd like to run a game for the kids every weekend, but I figure that will be difficult to achieve. We'll see. All but one of the kids is 11 or younger, and one who plays occasionally (depending on what game we're playing) is 6; the older one is in his mid-teens. I've been playing RPGs with them (and occasionally their parents) on and off for several years, starting with FUDGE Bunnies & Burrows. Some of the kids have played when some of they were 5 years old or even younger; at that age I have the kids roll dice and handle all the rules work myself; it works great. When I run things I generally try to keep things age-appropriate for the youngest in the group. They've all played video games and are familiar with common fantasy and science fiction tropes from the games.
Over a couple of years we've played Big Eyes, Small Mouth (2nd Edition Revised) a lot, and Bugging', and D&D some, and Savage Worlds a lot. A couple of the older kids have run D&D and Savage Worlds adventures for me, one from a commercial module that was a present and another other using dungeons built with Legos and Lego figures as miniatures. We've played through BESM Dungeon and several Savage Worlds adventures (including some of the free adventures and some of the Savage Tales pdfs) and are working our way through a couple of D&D adventures.
It's hard to schedule time with all the kids together at the same time as I have free time, and there's no telling before hand when the next time we'll be able to play will be, so I tend to run adventures as short campaigns. I've never gotten to run a long campaign. BESM Dungeon and the currently running D&D adventure The Sunken Citadel (updated for 3.5E) have probably been the longest running games. I'd like to run Evernight or 50 Fathoms for them some time.
I'd also like to run more board games: I've still never played Settlers of Catan, despite having it for a couple of years.