Roleplaying Games
10 reasons to dump high fantasy for sci-fi horror
“Final report, the commercial star-ship Nostromo. Third officer reporting. The other members of the crew — Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash, and Captain Dallas — are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier within six weeks. With a little luck the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”
— Ellen Ripley, “Alien”
To the first-time or newly-minted gamer, D&D is considered the default RPG. That shit needs to stop. As I’ve said many times, Dungeons & Dragons is the conservative oligarch of roleplaying games.
Superheroes
Predictions on the Marvel Multiverse RPG. Also, where is Doctor Doom?
Marvel is developing a new tabletop roleplaying game in-house. We don’t know much about it. We know that it will use a new “D616” system, which is a reference to Marvel’s prime universe designation. We know it will have six stats: Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic. We know it will be designed by Matt Forbeck. We know a Playtest Rulebook will be out next year. We know the full game will be out in 2023. We know that Doctor Doom was not mentioned in the press release.
Since we don’t know anything else, I’m going to speculate a…
Cardboard Hollywood
and Other Warhammer+ Predictions
About two and a half years ago I wrote ‘Warhammer 40,000’ Is Not Ready for Hollywood. Apparently Games Workshop agreed. They’re launching their own streaming service, with blackjack and hookers, featuring a lineup of formerly fanmade animated shows.
Warhammer+ (or Warhammer Plus) was announced with a messy presentation a few days ago. The highlight of was 7-minute clip from ‘Angels of Death’, which looked amazing. The rest was just soundbites from the other shows and little else. The details are still sketchy, but more info was promised on June 23rd.
WH+ is GW’s attempt to apply Apple’s “walled garden” logic…
5 Games and their Aesthetics…Table Presence Is Everything…Board Games are the New Black
Wargaming
You don’t have to use GW’s rules
SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. …
Roleplaying Games
They’re not making a ‘Demon: The Fallen’ show, but they should
A few days ago Paradox Interactive announced it would give Hollywood another shot at the World of Darkness. The previous attempt to bring WoD to the masses was Kindred: The Embraced in the 90s. It wasn’t great, and the star of the show died in a motorcycle accident so a revival wasn’t likely.
Vampire: The Masquerade will probably be the focus on any new TV show or movie, but vampires have been done to death! Starting with Demon: The Fallen would be WAY more interesting, if only because watching Conservatives shit themselves is fun.
In Hollywood terms Demon: The Fallen…
Superheroes
Cliches are(n’t) tropes and the government screwed John Walker
“What’s with all the knives!?” — John Walker, aka ‘Captain America’
I felt the need to stat up John Walker, the new-then-former Captain America from ‘The Falcon and the Winter Solider’.
I got into comic books through roleplaying games. And since the Marvel games were better than the DC games, I glomed on to Marvel more. But they’re all out of print, so my go-to Marvel system is Risus: The Anything RPG. It works for emulating movies and books and such because characters are built purely with Cliches. And TVtropes is a great source for Cliches. …
Roleplaying Games
A whirlwind tour of Mothership stuff…Androids and Scum make space interesting…AI will torture humanity…life is a Random Table with no good results
Wargaming
Winning the Uncertainty Game: Turning Strategic Intent into Results with Wargaming
“Tabletop games are exposed engineering: they don’t just let us see their nuts and bolts, they let us touch them; rearrange them. Change them.” — Brett J. Gilbert
Absolute certainty is unknowable. People can be 70% or 90% certain of a thing, but anyone that’s 100% certain of anything other than physical phenomena, like gravity, is either lying or just wrong. That said, the want for complete certainty is what sustains business book publishers. So here we are.
Winning the Uncertainty Game is written in dry-as-toast business-y language. The book is meant for execs, or at least middle managers. Gamers…
Roleplaying Games
In which you can play a Psychic Plant-Person with a Miniature Tank
“You are playing a male Demon AI. He has curving black horns and seams where the parts all connect. He owns a cellphone earpiece, a package of fruity gum, and jumper cables. He dresses in a naval officer hat and pool noodle armour and wields a pistol.” — Gamma World Bot
This game has gone by a few names. Officially it’s D&D Gamma World, but it’s also been called “Gamma World 4e”, and “Gamma World 4th edition” because it shares D&D 4e’s rules. It’s also been called “Gamma World 7TH edition” because it’s the 7th incarnation of the game.
Gamma…
