Rpgs @ MindSay

OK, i'm addicted... i thought Runescape was addicting, but this game tops it... its a MMORPG in which it has the standard lots of other people playing... its kinda like Diablo in the controls and stats, but much more refined. In the game you do various quests to gain exp and items. You can sell your items on a mass market, in which the prices are set by the players... all items in the market were placed there by the players... You can learn various technices to enchance your weapon skills as well as manufactuing... you can become anything... a sword wielding gun maker... or a axe chopping medicine man... as with the items, all weapons for sale have been made by the other players in the game. I've seen where you can even become the leader of your own town... underclasses consist of shareholders, and administrators of certain services... the possiblities are limitless, and the economics of the game are awe inspiring... the game is free to play and can be aquired though Download.com in the Role-Playing Massivily Multiplayer section... i'll give you more if i get the chance to put it down...

Mellie, i've got to get you this game, you'll love it :-)

I finally got to listen to the MADHAT Car Wars podcasts and episode 4 of the Roll2D6 pocasts.  The MADHAT shows are delivered in a downhome Tennessee twang by a diehard Car Wars fanatic that runs several PBEM games-- and his coverage of those games has inspired my to check 'em out.  This podcast-jockey (?) had 11 people sign up for his most recent game and 5 of those were repeat players.

 

The Roll2D6 podcast had slightly better production values; it came off more like a real radio talk show because the two hosts banter back and forth so much.  The Car Wars fanatic would try to describe the history of his favorite game while the other fellow cracked jokes!  On the other hand, the Madhat show scores many MONDO grooviness points for letting out the secret of the DwarfStar games web pages.  Follow the link to find a gold mine in classic gaming goodness!

Here's my first attempt at building something with GURPS 4e and Powers.  I noticed early on that this ain't anything like designing vehicles for Car Wars.  With Car Wars, you pick a body-size and start loading it up with goodies-- it's not much more complicated than going grocery shopping provided you can add and multiply.  With GURPS, you think of a character or power... and then you attempt to model it with the rules.  This makes things much more subjective and you can waste a lot of time figuring out the best way to do things and then still feel like you've made a bad design decision or broken a rule.

 

Anyways, the advantage I've worked up was inspired by several different games of the 80's.  First was the "Solar Power" from Heroes Unlimited.  Basically it just gave a die of damage per level of your character.  This was pretty disappointing.  Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had an entry on mutant stegasauruses with funny solar powers resulting from the weird plates on their backs.  This was more interesting.  I played Gamma World back then a lot more than the Palladium stuff, so I attempted to come up with some new mutant abilities for that game, but eventually abandoned it in frustration.  But now with GURPS Powers, I've got the tools to actually finish my rough ideas....

 

Heat Wave (+300%) Affliction-1 (Biological, -10%; Cone 13 hexes wide, +180%; Contact Agent, +150%; Stunning, +10%; Secondary Affect-- Attribute Penalty -4 to ST, DX, and HT and -2 to IQ, +20%; Increased 1/2 D x5, +20%; All-Out, -25%; Costs 3 FP, -15%) [40]

 

This attack creates a wave of intense heat that stuns the victims and in some cases causes a heat exhaustion that can last minutes.  At range 1-10, the attack is resisted with a HT roll.  At range 11-20, the attack is resisted at HT+3.  (Note that the victim can roll each second to break out of the stun if he fails the first time.)  If the resistance roll is missed by 5 or more the victim suffers the attribute penalty.  Note that it actually costs 4 FP to use because of the biological modifier.

 

A note on the cone: it's 1 hex wide at range 1-3, 3 hexes wide at range 4-6, 5 hexes wide at range 7-9, 7 hexes wide at range 10-12, 9 hexes wide at range 13-15, 11 hexes wide at range 16-18, and 13 hexes wide at range 19-20.

 

I just spotted a possible error in my design....  Do I need to pay the +10% for stunning when the Attribute Penalty is only a secondary affect?  Hmm....  Dunno.  Well... I'll hit the books.  I cringe at the thought of posting this on the SJGames board-- it'd break my heart at this point to find out that there's a much more appropriate way to build this thing after I spent 2 hours fiddling with it!

I ran Steve Jackson and David Ladyman's "Convoy" scenario for Car Wars this weekend.  It turned out to be a nice break from the more competitive one-on-one games I was playing last summer.  Because this was going more into a role-playing territory, we spent a lot less time haggling over rules interpretations and tweaking designs.  This gave the games a much more casual feel.

 

I won't spoil the scenario for those that haven't played it, but it is a good one. 

 

My player ended up killing a laser armed station wagon.  He left his mechanic with the kill to salvage the laser while the rest of the convoy headed into town.  This avoided a $5,000 penalty in the final payout, but the mechanic was spotted by a "Cyclones" cycle gang member as he was finishing up.  In our next session we will play out the Pack Attack scenario and see if the lone van can make it back to town.

 

My player is calling me to set up the next game and emailing me his team's stats.  (Always a good sign....)  I'd like to have each scenario connect to another in a logical way... and have consistent consequences to the choices of the player.  We plan on playing out the road trips from city to city, so I'll need to get some better maps of the the Memphis area and then come up with some patrons, encounters, etc.  I think the AADA Road Atlas and Survival Guide will have most of what I need....

 

I really like the more-or-less low tech equipment of the pre-"Uncle Albert's" days.  We are running with just Car Wars and Truck Stop right now.  I want to emphasize the desperation of the common man, the danger outside of fortress towns, and the rarity of advanced equipment.  The PC's are a rare breed... but even with the cash they picked up from completing their mission, there's only just so powerful that a PC vehicle can get.  Civilization is only justbarely out of the "Chassis and Crossbow" era-- and cloning is still experimental and not widely available yet.

There's been a couple of more sessions since the last post.

 

In one we convinced a pilot to give us footage of the Quaker vessel being destroyed.  We got full footage of the life boats being shot to pieces.  Gruesome.  The guy gave us the stuff on condition that it be reworked to not look like it was coming from his plane.  Our trusty mathematical master of topology and vectors is hard at work on this even as we speak....

 

We then went to break into the warehouse.  There was only one guard... I decided that as a reporter I was just doing my job-- to heck with the cops.  A fellow PC picked the lock and we began to search.  Investigation of a strange noise led us all to being incapacitated.  As we came to, police were storming the building....  At the end of the session we had retreated to a mysterious secret hideout the was under an open "secret passage" in the floor.  On surveillance equipment we noticed the police finding my knife that I'd dropped during the scuffle.

 

In the next session we examined the equipment in the hideout.  Two other PC's managed to find us and let us out.  Finially-- the whole group is together!  We sent a robot to spy on the hideout we escaped from and caught the police dismantling everything.  We tracked the evil twins to a hotel.

 

One player went to the bar to find out if anyone had seen them.  He ended up getting drunk with a dentist that was in town for a convention and strange activities involving midgets.  The player roleplayed out his part in his thick russian accent.  He didn't find out much other than that the twins had come into the building.

 

I took my turn at finding things out.  I ended up bribing a bellboy.  I passed him a $20 bill with the classic handshake trick.  The GM made me roll... I got a 04 on percentile dice!  Woo-hoo.  The kid was impressed.  Man I was slick.  I got the room number.

 

Now what?

 

Not a lot is happening in each session.  We are making more jokes now and being just generally stupid.  We also don't have a coherent strategy-- there's no leader and no feel that we're all on the same team.  I think it's odd that the two times we've really pushed the plot to the next point its been because of me stepping into my intrepid reporter persona and just getting it done.  I worry that that sort of thing will get me killed and I'm frustrated that once we get to the next plot point, things tend to fall apart as we fumble whatever opportunity that we have.  Some of that is due the story... but I think more is due to the fact that we're a bunch of goofballs.

 

If we're actually going to save the universe, we've really got to get our act together.