Personally, I just haven’t had a good experience playing online at all. That’s on me, I’m playing a boardgame with maps, while most of the others are ‘acting’ roles and have forgotten to move on the board altogether. As a DM, I try to offer both stage-like moments to accept the game-hook, transitional moments for […]
Solve. Survive. Salvage. Score. Swap.
Choose two.
Looking For Title
[SPOILER] Cleaning up and looking for a title: “A Time For Ice” “Icy Errand”“Ship” “Pyramid cap” “Mummy” “Spacegirl” “Fungi” “Race” “Glacier”? -I am working on a scenario design that I thought of [’20 during convalescence]: mystery based on a glacier, The team must a) stop a madman; b) secure the macguffin; c) collect items from […]
There are many ways
There have been many ways to play ‘the game’. Not just different settings and systems. Some flat-out sucked [5e,PF,VtM]. Some were beautiful, but unplayable as long-term. The longest was Traveller Classic Black Empire Strikes Back – 2yr I’m not saying all have been bad. Online has differed greatly from the FLGS. And IRL suffered during […]
Bullion In Science Fiction
Lengthy research into ‘carrying cash’ for science fiction. I was going to hand out gold coins and plutonium as treasure, but after several articles, I can see other forms of bullion being used. A substantial number of video games also provide larger, bulky items that are sort of ‘coin of the realm’. I think the […]
All these Internet people [an annual retrospective]:
Owen invited me to a game, ran session 0, cancelled. Ghosted. Nicole joined and never spoke. Ghosted. Edward ghosted. Amber never ran a game. Ghosted. Dave was no drugs in a druggie game and refused all traps and dungeons. King rolled a character and no showed. Ghosted. Bob was I do drugs, I drug you, […]
Cartoons Are Philosophy
I may be a Catholic meat-eating American, but I understood the subject matter very well. It’s not like Superman was nuanced. It just put forward the idea that a fair-dealing plain-speaking person was valued and that lying, cheating, and bias are not constructive.
A Foreigner Asks To Play
Alf decided to help me by finding players. Alf is 9 hours away from me. Alf is as welcome as a headcold but he consistently ‘wins’. He sent me an application from a prospective player. I wrote a nicely worded letter of invitation. He said he wasn’t nor ever had been interested in my game […]
OSR gameplay and MC syndrome
This is OSR SciFi gaming with some extensions for RP. That’s shorthand for “Old School Renaissance”, meaning that the book only covers the mechanics of making a character and the mechanics of combat, survival and skills. The book doesn’t bother defining roleplaying, that’s just the chatter created by the background. The book[s] don’t define a […]
How I still use a little Starjammer
As technology improved, travel time between worlds dropped from months and years to days, and the optimal routes between planets became crowded with spacecraft. Yet even in this new age of space flight, voyages beyond the solar system remained rare; traveling to even the nearest star at conventional speeds would take generations. A few starships […]
Forcing Labor
Plot – 4000-5200ad the major church allowed and encouraged the ‘death’ of all ‘unsafe’ AI. Plot – 4200-4667 after a Dark Age, robotics replace forced hard labors 3LS. Plot – 4400ad after reaching orbital assets, androids are allowed to enter service 3LS. Plot Fun (it’s not always about race, it’s about control of production):Copypasta favorite […]