Tuesday, May 24, 2016

RPG Bits: Origins, Campaign Shifts, and Beyond

1. ORIGINS
I’ll be at Origins in a few weeks. If you see me please say hello. I'm usually terrible at introducing myself to people I know via G+ or elsewhere, but I'm going to try my best. Sherri will be with me so the con will, by definition, be awesome. I have a massive wishlist of things I want to play. I’m running at Games on Demand and I’m scheduled for at least the Thursday 8PM and Saturday 8PM slots. I’ve submitted two events:

NEO SHINOBI VENDETTA
Keep to the shadows! Your cyber-ninja clan has been betrayed, mind-controlled, and used to serve sinister ends. The Mega-Zaibatsus behind this have concealed their role…until now. Your cell, hidden even from fellow shinobi, stalk through Neo-Kyoto. You plan, plot, and carefully strike from the darkness.

But sometimes things go wrong. Like now.

If it is the will of The Illustrious Orbital Mikado, you will survive! Uses Action Cards, a card-based Fate hybrid.

MAGIC, INC
In the sorcerous corporation, Magic, Inc, your department lies at the bottom of the labyrinthine Org Chart. You like it that way. Your team has just managed to hang on- avoiding responsibility and blame. But doing so is hard work; you desperate transmute budgets, curse rival divisions, and make your faked resumes vanish. Can you avoid The Annual Review while getting your time-card signed?

Uses Action Cards, a card-based Fate hybrid.

If you're at the con, consider playing in one of those. I put together new decks and received the last of those from DriveThru Cards this week. I’m super excited. I’m also taking Kingdom plus some pick-up board games.

2. CAMPAIGN TURNSTILE
Of course since that’s coming up, everything else has to get more complicated. We just began the Assassins of the Golden Age arc for Ocean City Interface. On Saturday characters hit the table, doing the legwork and plotting for their operation. They're ensuring their candidate gets elected to the High Council of Genoa. We’re also speeding towards the finale of Guards of Abashan. Last week they discovered alternate timelines had begun to bleed through into the city. The group made their made through various eras of occupation, heading for the showdown with the last of the Three “Evil” Sorcerers. I have to decide what games I'll put forward after that wraps. I have four or five ideas. 

We also did session eight of ten for Crowsmantle last night. That ended with the group attempting a rescue operation but being captured instead. Rich will run after we wrap that campaign. Finally we should be starting my Wednesday Mutants & Masterminds game soon, probably right after Origins. I’m going to begin with a Microscope session covering the span between the campaigns. We're moving to the Third Edition rules so I need to do another read-through of those to prepare. 

3. LUCHA WUNDERLAND
I’m seriously considering how to actually do the Monster of the Week/World Wide Wrestling mash-up. I need to figure out when I’d run it and how.

4. ACTION CARDS
I hope to have a "Beta" document for Action Cards available soon on DriveThru. By Beta, I mean truly rough, but enough to a run a game from. I’m about halfway through the first editing pass, plus I have a couple of small sections to complete. I want to have it ready and posted before Origins. I’ll talk more about that if I actually get it done.

5. PLAY ON TARGET
We’re recording new episodes of Play on Target this coming Friday. The first will cover Loot! in all of its forms. We’ll consider kinds of loot, treasure distribution, and what it all means from player & GM perspectives. Our second show will look at “Games Ahead Their Time.” We started with the idea of games containing new mechanics that only caught on much later. I suspect we’ll expand the topic when we get to the recording. Suggestions & Questions are welcome.

6. THE GENERIC-NESS
Finally, if I can push through, I hope to have the next installment of the History of Generic RPGs up by Thursday. It may be later, but I want to release that by the end of May. For the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing “Greatest Hits” posts on the blog. I'll take older pieces that I like or that others dug and add some new commentary. Ideally that will be easy, but I know how I operate and suspect I’ll overdo it.

IF YOU’RE AT ORIGINS STOP BY AND SAY HI! Hopefully my normal social anxiety will be minimal.

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