Claimh Solais

Gillian the Vampire Slayer 1.6 "First Impressions"- Plot Summary

People are people
So why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully
Depeche Mode, "People are People"

This episode began with a phone call between Rupert Giles and Nigel Harker. They discuss the rebuilding of the Watcher's Council and the current situation in Ann Arbor. Giles asks Nigel about Andrew and how he is doing, suggesting that it may be a good idea to have Andrew train to become a watcher and they discuss flying the whole gang out to England for training and networking with other people fighting the good fight.

Cut to Thursday afternoon. George has been working at creating a tracer program that can trace the location of the gang in the city in case any of them are captured again while on patrol. He steps out to get some parts. On the street he feels a sharp pain in the back of his neck and feels back there to find a dart sticking in his neck. He loses conciousness as two men are pushing him into a van.

That same afternoon, Nigel Harker returns home to find two police officers at his place. They tell him that they need him to come into the station for questioning on a murder case. They give him a few small details. Nigel calls Gillian letting him know that he is being taken to the police station.

As Nigel gets in the back seat, some sort of stasis field holds him in place in the back seat. "You're not really police are you?"

"I'm afraid not, sir."

Gillian and Amy speed down the road towards the police station and see the police car turning on the road they were on going the other way. Amy swerves to hit the police car but misses, clipping a car in oncoming traffic. The police car's sirens turn on and the car speeds down State St.

Amy gets out of the car to exchange insurance information with the lady she hit when Gillian hops in the driver seat and speeds off. "Crazy bitch!" She ends up explaining to the police that she was giving a ride to someone she didn't really know and the crazy girl stole her car.

Gillian speeds after the car and follows them as the car seems to go in circles, not seeming to try and speed away, but making so many turns it seems they may be trying to lose her.

Inside the police car, Nigel observes as the fake officers call on their radio that they have someone tailing them. Plans are made to have a welcoming commitee at homebase for whoever is following them. Then, the car behind them rams them. The car speeds off so fast that the Toyota Celica has no chance of keeping up.

George wakes up in a white cell with a glass door. An obvious vamp in the cell across from him asks how he got nabbed and warns George not to drink the blood packets. "I think they're drugged."

George is eventually taken by some soldiers to meet with a Dr. Nick Peterson. Peterson questions him about all the occult objects that were recently bought for him by Professor Nigel Harker, particularly the keyboard for typing in a demonic language. "Just a hobby."

Meanwhile, Nigel is also taken in for an interrogation and ends up speaking to a black woman who appears to be the leader of the base, Capt. Mandy Waller.

Both Nigel and George find themselves accused of being occult threats. When they try to argue that this group, "The Initiative", has no right to abduct them, both of their interrogators yell at them. "We can do whatever what we need to do to keep our country safe!" They argue that since the destruction of Sunnydale, the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore the occult menace. They must find and contain the demonic forces around them and they brought in the two because they had evidence to believe the two were demons. As evidence of their prabable cause, they show surveillance photos of Nigel with Gar (the demon) sneaking around the abandoned "HST Holding facility" from the previous episode. They show credit card records for Nigel Harker showing all of his occult purchases.

Meanwhile, Nigel tells Captain Waller that whithin 30 minutes, someone is going to come in here that she is not ready to deal with and unless she wants the men under her command to be badly hurt, she had best let him go. (This scene determined much of the later mood of the game as the players on the outside were determined to make Nigel right. Metagaming? Yes, but it's fun metagaming.)

Eventually, George is brought in the room with Waller and Harker where they are "interviewed" together.

The rest of the gang spend this time trying to find out who the fake police could have been and where they took Nigel. Unable to find George, they worry that he has been taken as well.

When they figure out that it was the Initiative that snatched the watcher, Gillian goes to ask Dorian, the vampire, for help freeing him. Dorian refuses to help saying that he has stayed off their radar so far, he doesn't want the Initiative being alerted to his presence now.

With a locator spell and some unexpected help from Dorian, the group end up finding the apparently abandoned warehouse that the Initiative is using.

Amy goes to talk to the Initiative, while Andrew prepared a "glamour" to disguise him and Dr. Post as the fake officers. Amy is taken by the Initiative and joins Nigel and George in Captain Waller's office. Together the three of them convince Waller and Dr. Peterson that they are on the same side. There is even some talk about future cooperation by Dr. Peterson, but Waller seems distrustful of the Watcher's Guild, a bunch of "stuffy academics" who were not appointe dby anyone to do the job they were doing. George argues that noone appointed the Initiative either. Waller says she acts at the orders of the US Government but the American people have no idea they exist nor did they vote on this.

If the public knew the occult was real, than any punk with a grudge could summon Azathoth and destroy Chicago! We act under executive order of the United States of America to protect the citizens of this great nation and it's better for them not to know what we do or even if we exist.
-Captain Mandy Waller

Meanwhile Andrew, Gillian and Dr. Post sneak into the base and through the use of several drama points and a telepathy spell cast by Andrew to contact Amy. (A DP was spent to make the spell casting roll, because at this point Andrew had large negative modifiers to for spellcasting) They were making their way through the corridors with a soldier they took hostage when glass barriers came from the ceiling to surround them. With another DP spent, the group manage to escape the trap and they run into Dr. Waller in the hall as she runs out to confront them. Their is a stand-off with Waller and Gillian pointing guns at eachother that eventually diffuses and the group moves into her office. The group has tense words with the Initiative officers. As she and the gang leave, Gillian threatens Waller if she tries anything against her friends again.
Amy stays behind a moment to talk to Dr. Waller and try to smooth things over with the soldiers and offer to act as a liason between the two groups in case they need to work together in the future.

That night, Andrew goes to his first game with the new D&D group and more importantly to Andrew, Matt. Amy comes by to check Matt with her new "Gaydar spell" and later tells Andrew that Matt may be a potential boyfriend for him. Andrew calls Matt the next day and the two make plans to grab dinner together and see a movie. The two end up talking late, but Andrew is still unsure how Matt would react so the two end up just talking with an awkward moment early in the morning as Andrew leaves Matt's dorm room to go back to his.

Saturday night, Gillian has her first date with Eric, the guy she met at her birthday party. During dinner, she asks him what brought him from California to Ann Arbor. He replied that he was looking for some friends. Gillian, thinking that his behavior while answering the question was a little weird decided to borrow a page from Amy's book.

So....these friends.... They're not demons are they?
-Gillian

Eric acts even weirder and eventually admits that he was coming to Ann Arbor hunting for two vampires that killed his friends in Santa Rosa for revenge He had chased them through Mexico, to South America and back to California and now he heard they were in Ann Arbor. Their names? Spike and Drusilla.

The episode ends as Nigel is talking to Giles. He tells Giles that Andrew and George are possibly willing to join the watchers. He tells about what happened with the Initiative. At one point he mentions Dr. Post. "I didn't know we had anyone named...." Giles goes quiet. He tells Nigel that he has to check something and will call him back. A few minutes later, Giles calls back. He tells Nigel that Jonathon Post and his wife, Gwendolyn were kicked out of the Watcher's Council years ago.

Episode ends.

Monday Mashup 27: Go, Go Godzilla!

In Monday Mashup #27, Bryant asks us to mash Godzilla.

History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men
-Blue Oyster Cult, "Godzilla"

For this game, the PCs would take the roles of elven nobles from the city of Tau-kya

The elven city of Tau-kya is the largest city in the island nation of the high elves. It has towers of ivory that reach high into the sky where the elves live in splendor. Considered one of the most beatiful places in the world, it is one of the main trade centers in it's hemisphere.

Recently, elven explorers discovered an island where the natives, a lizard-like humanoid race, worship a great giant lizard they call the "God Lizard." According to their prophecies, the thunder lizard will soon return and its speech will consume the world in flames.

Meanwhile, the nearby Dark Elven nation of Yogarrath has been experimenting with new forms of magic. To protect themselves, they tested them on an island in the ocean. While testing a spell with enough destructive force to destroy a small village, they accidently awoke a giant lizard that slumbered underneath the nearby ocean.

Now, there have been sightings. Many vessels have reported seeing the shadow of something enormous underneath the waves and a boat of survivors arrived in the city from a ship that they claim was destroyed by the thrashing of a giant lizard's tail.

As the God Lizard attacks the great city and all of the nation's great wizards and warriors standhelpless before its path, the elves need to make a choice. Deep beneath the city, a giant bug creature was taken after being put into a form of suspended animation by its creators, who found it too difficult to control. The monster was meant to help the elves create the ivory towers but it's large caterpillar-like form was not as useful as the elves had hoped it would be.

As the catacombs beneath the city shake, the heroes would have to make their way beneath the maze-like tunnels to find where the giant insect lies dormant.

Will they do it? Can they do it? Will they release an even greater evil upom the world?

If they do release it, they find that the caterpillar-monster has taken a new form....a winged form.

Can a Giant Moth actually defeat the God Lizard?

Wonder Woman casting

Well, it took long enough and I fear it may be too late. For the last couple of years, I've been watching all the Marvel comic characters get turned into movies (Spiderman, X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk and the upcoming Punisher, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Iron Man, Man Thing and Elektra movies). As a DC fan, I've been wondering when my favorite superheroes would start getting the Hollywood treatment again. The only characters that ad confirmed movies coming out were Catwoman and John Constantine and neither of them look very promising. (Halle Berry's costume has me worried about that movie and Constanine is starring Keanu Reeves.)

Lately, there have been a few confirmations about DC movies. The next Batman is on. It will star Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Michael Caine will play Alfred. A new Superman movie is in the works again as well.

The best news I've heard lately has been that Jaime King is rumoured to be attached to the lead role in a Wonder Woman movie. When Carla and I were driving home from seeing Bulletproof Monk, I said to her that Jaime King would be perfect for Wonder Woman if they ever make a movie and I guess this means that I'm not the only one that thinks it.

As far as other options for the part, Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) has expressed interest and supposedly so has Sarah Michelle Gellar. I'm still rooting for Jaime King.

Wednesday Weird #4: The Barbarian

Admittedly, this weeks Wednesday Weird is more of a staple of the Sword & Sorcery genre than anything else, but it's still a cliche. In honor of the release of Dark Horse's new Conan comic and Mongoose Publishing's Conan RPG, this week's project is the barbarian.

Technically, a barbarian could be anyone whose ways are considered primitive by the people around him or her, but Robert E. Howard's character has been so popular that when gamers think of barbarains, they inevitably think of the Conan, a big muscular guy wearing simple clothes or furs and swinging a huge sword or battle-axe. This stereotypical barbarian has been showing up in video games as far back as Gauntlet and as recently as the PS2's Baldur's Gate II. It's time to give him a little weird.

Since the story that inspired the Wednesday Weird was about a combat with a frozen lizard (Col. Tom was an iguana technically), I've wanted to use a frozen lizard in one of these weirds....so this one is it.

This one is set in the setting of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

As the PC cross the dunes in a desert, they see a very large human fighting with some dark elves. Around him lie several fallen warriors, some elven and some human. From his skin and hair colors, he is apparently from the far northern kingdom of Kislev. He wears a fur loin cloth and little else, but the most striking thing is how he seems to be fighting the elves with a giant frozen lizard which he is swinging by it's tail!

How it happened- The Dark Elves of this world ride giant lizards called "cold ones." This one wasn't big enough to ride yet, but they start training the cold ones at a very young age. This one was the size of a large dog. When the dark elves ambushed the barbarian and his companions, the wizard was able to cast a few spells before falling, including one that made the cold one even colder.

The Dark Elves were taking heavy losses against this barbarian and were about ready to run when a wizard with them cast a spell to turn the barbarian's great sword into rust, so the barbarian improvised with the closest thing he could find, the frozen lizard.

Constantine News

According to a recent issue of Wizard, the Constantine movie will be based on Dangerous Habits. Since it's my favorite Hellblazer story arc and the story that got me hooked on the title, I'm starting to look forwardto this, despite the world's worst casting job. (Keanu Reeves is playing John Constantine.)

Dangerous Habits is one of those rare comics that catches you from the first couple of lines. By the second page you are told that John Constantine is dying. The story then goes on to tell how Constantine's doctor told him he had lung cancer and only months to live. What follows is Constantine's search for a way to cheat death. He speaks with archangels, demons and the devil himself looking for a way, while looking up some old friends and making lots of new enemies.

It's a great comic. I suggest reading it before seeing Hollywood and Mr. Reeves butcher it.

Satan purchased Catan

According to sources, the prince of lies is looking to trade for sheep.

Be careful. He has a handful of resource cards. Some people say he has a monopoly card.

Doc has more information.

Final Fantasy Live Action?

Check out this trailer for a Japanese movie called Casshern. There's another trailer for the movie here. I have no idea what they're saying but even if they never do an English subtitled or dubbed version, I want to see this movie.

(Link via Johan.)

Secret World: Mr. Jones

I kept meaning to post this. Storn did some sketches for our Champions characters the other night. He did a real good job with Jones. You can see it at the bottom of the page here.

Gillian the Vampire Slayer

Gillian the Vampire Slayer now has a theme song. I've been keeping an ear out for a cool punk-ish song for the theme. I found one. It's "If This is the End of the World" by AM Radio.

A sample of the lyrics:

If all we have is a second
to say goodbye
I'll watch the world blowing
to pieces in your eyes

I hope tomorrow's still going to come
I hope tomorrow's still going to come

Gillian the Vampire Slayer 1.6 "First Impressions"- The Slayers POV

Last night's Gillian session went really well. I've no time to write up the summary right now, but you can read about Gillian's experiences here.

Savage Worlds

Since the GM is going to be fairly busy with real life stuff, my Thursday night gaming group will be taking a short break from the regularly scheduled game. Storn offered to GM some games in the Forgotten Realms setting during the Champions break, but instead of using the D&D setting, he used Savage Worlds.

Savage Worlds is a system created by Shane Hensley, the creator of Deadlands. It's supposed to be "universal," but like all games that make that claim, it would work better for certain genres. In particular, it seems to be good for "pulp=level" characters, characters who are bigger than life but not with a whole lot of "powers" or magical abilities. (It's magic system looks a little too simplistic and generic and it doesn't look like it could scale well to more powerful characters.)

The dice mechanics are very simple and quick. For every attribute or skill, a character is rated by the type of dice they rolled. A character with a d4 only has a little skill. A d12 is very skilled. To determine if a skill check is successful, you simply roll the dice and look at the number rolled. Usually, you'll be trying to roll a 4 or better. If you roll the highest number possible on a die (an eight on a d8 for example), you get to re-roll the die and add the new roll. If you roll the highest number again you repeat the process, so it is an open-ended roll.

PCs and other important characters are called "Wild Cards." They get to roll another die, a d6, with each of their die rolls. The d6 roll is open-ended too and they can then choose the higher of the two dice. So, even if you're not very skilled (d4) and you need to make a roll, you have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

Combat seems to work similiarly with the target number equalling a number based on the targets parry score.

In many ways, this seems like a simplified D&D system. It has mini rules and it actually sells itself as a miniature game as well as a RPG, but I don't think it work too well for a large scale miniature battle.

I borrowed the book to read through and I'll post some more about it as I learn more. So far, I'm impressed but think that Unisystem (Buffy) is just as flexible and works a little better. I don't like a dice-rolling mechanic that makes a player use all sorts of different kinds of dice. A good system, in my opinion, should only use one or two kinds of dice. It keeps things simple.

Paranoia Returns!

(Thanks to Gemma for pointing this out.)

Mongoose Publishing will be releasing a new edition of the classic RPG, Paranoia!

They've also created a blog for the new Paranoia game.

I haven't played or run Paranoia in years. I should dust the game off sometime and try and get some friends over for a one-shot.

ACUS 2004- "The Longest Fall" nanofiction

An open invitation. It seemed like a good at a time. After all, this was his realm. Any unwelcome guests could be dealt with, or so he thought.

Approaching the new arrival, there was no doubt. He didn't have his sword with him, but it was him.

"You have a lot of nerve coming here."

".....by your invitation."

"After what you did...."

Michael didn't let him finish the sentence. "I was following orders, brother."

Lucifer Morningstar smiled. "I've heard that one before."

Wednesday Weird #3: The Bar

For the third Wednesday Weird, we'll tackle the ultimate gaming cliche: "So, you're all at the bar...."

I'm pretty sure that since the earliest days of gaming, there have been shadowy men hanging out in bars looking to hire complete strangers for extremely important missions. Need a quick bit of action in your game? A bar fight is always a good pick-me-up.

So, we know the missions you pick up in a bar can get weird, but how can the scenario in the bar get weird?

I'm thinking a scenario set in Shadowrun or any other cyberpunk setting. The PCs are just beginning to earn a rep when they are contacted to meet a client in a certain bar for a possible job. The new client offers no name but wires a decent deposit directly into one of the PC's acounts with a promise of much more.

Arriving at the bar, the PCs are only there a short while when they are approached by a man claiming to be the person that contacted them. The man describes a desperate situation where he needs help from the PCs to rescue his sister. After he gets up to leave, another character appooaches them claiming to be the contact for the job with an equally desperate story. Every time one person finishes hiring them, another person shows with an equally desperate situation. None of them know anything about the other NPCs and plead for the PCs to believe them that they are the real deal. To the players try to complete all the jobs or what do they do to determine which ones telling the truth.

Why did it get weird? One of the npc had the legitimate job, of course. Unfortunately the mega-corp or crime boss that they need the PCs to help them with had a talented hacker working for them that managed to intercet the message for the PCs. Well, the boss is a little fond of games (he thinks like a Batman villian, I guess), so rather than just kill them all, he hired a bunch of people to approach the PCs and hire them for other made-up jobs. Of course, they'll be enough truth to the jobs to make the PCs have to do a bunch of research before they'll be able to determine the job was false.

Conan!

I saw the new Conan RPG the other day at the hobby shop. It looked pretty cool, but I was disappointed to see that the cover price is fifty dollars (US). It's all color interior art which helps explain the price, but it's expensive enough to keep me away.

Also, Dark Horse Comics is starting a new comic series that is supposed to remain more loyal to Robert E. Howard's version of Conan. I read the issue 0 (which they priced at only twenty-five cents) and I really like the art on it. Too bad I've already got so many titles that I collect.

Movie Review: The Butterfly Effect

Went to see The Butterfly Effect over the weekend. It was very good, but I can't recommend it to everyone. It's a very dark movie that really screws with your emotions.

The movie has several plot holes, but if you're willing to overlook them, it has a very interesting story. The main character has the ability to travel back and possess his younger body at different times in his life. He uses this to relive some of the worst times in his life and change things for the better. Of course, this does not go well.

They did a very good job of casting all the characters at various stages of their lives, finding young actors that looked like the actors playing the adult roles. Ashton Kutcher does a really good job as the lead. He seems to be a lot better actor that Dude, Where's My Car? would leave you to believe.

This movie's grade: B-

Another Game I Want

No money for it right now, but someday I want to pick up and try Universalis. From reading the reviews, it sounds like a great game for Ambercon.

WISH 84: The Fantastic Five

For this week's Game WISH, Ginger asks: What five games would you love to run/play if you had a willing group and a weekly time slot?

Just five? I'll try....

1. Nobilis- I've been wanting to run this setting since the game came out. Someday.
2. Prime Directive- A game based on the Starfleet Battles setting, it works a lot better as a gaming setting than the official Star Trek setting. I ran a really successful Star Trek game in GURPS years ago. I'd like to see if lightning can strike twice.
3. Battlestar Galactica- Set in the original TV series setting, I would set the game several years after the first (and only) season. Adama has passed away and Apollo is now the Captain of the fleet. I'd probably borrow some ideas from the Richard Hatch novels, but since I've only read the first, I can't say for sure. Currently, I'm thinking I'd use the Unisystem rules to run it. It works really good for cinematic action and I have some ideas for spaceship combat rules.
4. Angel- Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "But, you're already running a Buffy game! What's the difference?" I've got a few campaign ideas based around supernatural investigative groups and/or Angel's Los Angeles.
5. Mutants and Masterminds- Like Ginger, I'd like to run a superhero game that's not d20 or Champions. Mutants and Masterminds looks like d20, but it isn't. It's an "OGL" game, meaning that they were able to use what they liked from the d20 system and throw out the rest. The result is an excellent system that fixes everything I dislike in d20. Character creation is point-based instead of class based and levels aren't anything but a general guideline of how powerful a characters powers should be when buying their powers. For a setting, I was thinking something that is more along the X-Men than the Justice League.

Wednesday Weird #2: Charmed

Well, the second Wednesday Weird is coming out a few days late. Maybe, I shouldn't have put the day in the name.....

The second Wednedday Weird is dedicated to both Valentine's Day and the amazing Dr. Berkmann. The topic is :The "Charm Other" spell.

This spell shows up in several roleplaying games by many different names. Leaving the target charmed by the spellcaster, it can turn an enemy into a friend. Generally, the target will be susceptible to suggestion by the caster and will completely believe anything the caster says.

Now your job: How does this spell get weird?

Brok looked concern as he approached Grakk. Grakk had been acting weird since the encounter with the human plunderers in the dungeon. He had been moping around the campfire and did not even get involved on the ritual feasting on the felgerbeast the night before. Grakk had been the only survivor of the party that faced those humans. His companions had been butchered, so Brok had an idea what might be going on.

"You are concerned, little one. You fear that you could have done more to save Urk, Frogarth and the others...."

Grakk looked up at Brok. He was confused and then his face dropped to the ground.

"No grand-groopa. That is not it."

"Then why is your face so green with sorrow?"

"I ran away."

Brok sighed. Sitting beside Grakk, he placed his hand on the young goblin's soldier.

"It is not possible to always be brave. Sometimes, when faced with an overwhelming danger, the only option is to run."

Grakk looked up. "You don't understand! I did not run because I was scared!"

"Then why?"

"There was a woman there, a human woman. She played a beautiful song on a harp.....a song just for me. It made me feel something I had never felt."

"What was that?"

"For the first time in my life, I felt warm and fuzzy inside."

"How horrible!"

"No, it was really nice. I felt like the most important person in the world. I had felt so....special. This embaressed me and I ran."

"The witch must have enchanted you, Grakk."

"No, was not it!"

"You must think no longer about this!"

That night, Grakk left the village.

-------------------------------------------------

For several days after an encounter with goblins, the bard or wizard in an adventuring party keeps finding the strangest things left for him or her: A dead fish in his or her sleeping roll, a large rat with a broken back left on the trail that the group travels on, the entrails of a deer left at the door of the inn where the party sleeps.

When the character charmed a monster in a dungeon a while back, the monster just looked nervous and fled. Now, the sneaky little monster (I'm picturing a third level Goblin rogue in D&D myself) has felt that noone could ever make him feel as special as that wizrd or bard did that day and decided to leave signs of his devotion and love for that person, but is too nervous....too afraid of objection to be seen. Of course, the creature's idea of "courting" could be a little different than a humans. "Everyone knows that stringing the entrails of a deer on a person's hut is the truest way to win their heart."

World of Connemara: Session 7

The players just left. It was a good session overrall.

Continuing the group's first dungeon crawl...

The session began with Sarek, Serena and Verna in a room in the dungeon sleeping. They are awakened as something is outside of the door. Swinging open the door, they ended up in a heated battle with a slug like creature with mutliple tentacles and a tooth-filled maw.

Meanwhile, Arillion (the Wizard) had landed from the last episode's trap in a dungeon cell blocked my a fallen porticullus. He is trapped there with a woman who obviosly has been in the cell a while named Rosa. She appears to be a rogue and claims to be the captain of a ship, The Black Destiny. Strangely, she also claims to have entered the dark elve's lair in a cave somewhere on the mainland, hundreds of miles away. Apparently, the Elysium warps space as well as time.

Arillion met up with the rest of the group and they all spoke with Rosa, deciding to work with her to fid the dark elves. She claims that some of her crew were kidnapped.

The group eventually found a room where a Drider (half-dark-elf/half-spider) Sorcerer dwelled and seeing that the Drider was powerful and had elementals at his command, the group surrendered. The Drider cast a spell to make them sleep but Verna Goodberry resisted and tried fighting the Sorceror and failing. She fell from her wounds.

The party woke up in webs as the Drider leaves them. He has done something to them but they are not sure what. The Wizard is sure that something magical was placed in them....and Verna finds that she has no taste for the foods she loved before....or anything else. Everyone else's appetites seem fine.

The game ended with the group in a hall and their torch suddenly going out. A voice in the pitch darkness asks in Elven, "Now, what do we have here?"

The Good: A few entertaining combats surrounded some fairly good roleplaying scenes as the characters are starting to interact more. The end scenes as the characters were discussing what the Drider could have done to them were pretty good.

The Bad: Verna's attack on the Drider left her basically dead. As DM, I decided to be nice and say that the Drider used his magic to pull her back from death....but I had to add a cost. Now, I need to walk a balancing act. Lay it on too thick and it could become more angsty than the player can enjoy. Let it go at nothing and I make it too cheap. (Of course the players didn't realize just how dead Verna was....) The other bad thing.....I'm tired of the dungeon crawl type scenario already. Luckilly, they'll be in the Dark Elf city next game.

A Poll on Dice-rolling

I want to hear from you folks.

When you get down to it, there are two kinds of dice rolling mechanics in roleplaying games.

The first could be called the "roll and find the total", where players roll a given number of dice and either take the total and add it to a stat (as in D20 or Unisystem) or check and see if the total is under a certain target number determined by the stat and modifiers (as in GURPS and Hero).

The second type of dice rolling is the "Roll and keep" where a number of dice is rolled depending on the character's stats and the dice that are equal or over a target number are counted (as in White Wolf's Storyteller system and West End's DC Superheroes system). One variation I've seen of this was in the original Prime Directive RPG. In that one a number of dice were rolled based on the character's stats as well, but only the highest number rolled on the dice was kept.

So, which system do you tend to prefer?

WISH 83: Character mottos

Ginger asks: What are your characters’ mottoes, in ten words or less? Quotes and formal mottoes encouraged.

Currently active characters
Mr. Jones, the invisible man (aka "Ghost")- Keep your head down!
Griffin, the Pattern Knight- Without hope, all is lost.
Anoki, Amberite and Shaman- The spirit can not be caged.
Conrad Gareth, Amber's "Doc" Holliday- Ain't life grand?

recent characters
Chango, Master of Lightning (retired)- Act first! Think later!
Roy, super-hacker (aka "Sundevil")- Be prepared.
Lilly, the mutant-rights activist- I owe allegience only to what is right.
Jubei, immortal samurai (now deceased)- Minimal action for maximum effect. or Measure twice, cut once.

classic characters
Alexander Silver, son of Corwin- Knowledge is power.
Nightshadow, cloaked in the darkness- In the darkest hour, a light shines on every man.

The Buddhist Hells

I've been doing some research on hell myths and angels for "The Longest Fall." This web page has some good inspirational material. It has several hells from Buddhist Mythology with names like Black Rope Hell, Diamond-beak Hornet Hell, and Burning Hell of String-like Worms with descriptions of how the damned are punished.

GURPS Quiz

(Via This Tragic Glass)

You're GURPS Cliffhangers. You're amazingly
consise and fun. You're into everything from
Nazis to African Safaris, but you manage to
keep your own unique personality.


Which GURPS book are you?
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Books That Make the Man

Arref and others have been doing this meme of listing 15 speculative fiction books that inspire you. (I'm not sure if that was the original intent of the meme, but that was what they were posting.)

My books are:

1- Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
2- 1984 by George Orwell
3- Weird of the White Wolf by Michael Moorcock
4- Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
5- Dracula by Bram Stoker
6- Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
7- The Foundation by Isaac Asimov
8- The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
9- Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
10- King Arthur and his Knights by Sir James Knowles
11- The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum
12- The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
13- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
14- Bulfinch's Mythology
15- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I'm sure that there are others that should have been on the list but have been forgotten. The two Elric books are the books on the list from Moorcock but as a series, I'd actually rate his Corum books higher. Elric wasn't as consistently good as the Corum books, but the two I listed above really stood out for me. <Starship Troopers might be a weird choice from Heinlein, but it was the first I read and the only other one I read, Stranger in a Strange Land was really good but not as good as Starship Troopers. Many of Ray Bradbury's short story collections, particularly R is for Rocket and S is for Space almost made the list. I remember discovering his books in my junior high school library and checking each book they had by him out until I'd read them all.

gaming Resources: Victorian Gaming

Two links that I'm making not of for me to look at later:

Victorian Gamer

Victorian Roleplaying Themes

Wednesday Weird #1: The Mugging

What is the Wednesday Weird, you ask? Like many memes that can be found in the blogging world, the Wednesday Weird is a writing exercise where each week, a topic will be posted and participants will write about in it in their own blogs, livejournals or the comments section below. The Wednesday Weird is for gamemasters, writers and anyone else who wants to practice their creativity through this excersise. To understand why I have started this meme, read this previous entry. Each week in the Wednesday Weird, I will supply a fairly common cliche in gaming and/or fiction. Participants will then be challenged to take that cliche and give it an original twist.....something a little weird.

The best way for me to explain is to do this, so here goes.

The challenge for the first Wednesday Weird is: the mugging. It's a classic scenario that anyone who has ever played a "street-level" superhero game or read a lot of noir fiction has bound to have run across before. Variations of it can be found in almost any genre. I am sure that countless D&D characters have stopped some thief or half-orc from roughing up some nobleman in an alley. Someone with a weapon is stealing from some (presumably) helpless victim. This gives a chance for our protagonists to swoop in and save the day...or perhaps the protagonist is the muggee and the poor mugger has picked the wrong victim. Either way, it's been done a million times. The mugger is usually hopelessly outclassed by our stalwart hero or heroes. A few classic examples of this cliche being used in film are Superman (Clark and Lois are mugged leaving the Daily Planet) and Crocodile Dundee ("That's not a knife....").

Having GMed a lot of superhero games, I must admit having had the heroes beat up on a few muggers in my time. It's a great "first fight" scenario where you give the heroes some fairly easy opponent to give the players a bit of a feel for the game's combat system. The hero, a masked vigilante of some sort, sees a mugging taking place and jumps in to save the day. A man has another man held at gunpoint.

Now, to spruce it up. The hero notices that the victim is acting a little strange while jumping in. The victim is probably in shock. Struggling with the mugger, the would-be thief drops the gun. They struggle for a few moments more and then stop as they notice that the muggee has picked up the gun and is holding it on the two of them. When, the hero starts to step toward the victim the guy freaks out and starts yelling about demons and threatens to kill both the mugger and hero.

Can the hero get the gun away from the man without getting himself or the mugger shot?

The reason for the weirdness: The victim, we'll say "Johnny," was coming home from a rave. His friends were supposed to drive him home but he couldn't find them. He's tripping on Mescaline or some other hallucinogenic and was having a pretty good trip. He was looking at the sky and not really paying attention when he wandered down the wrong alley. Then his trip turned bad as someone threatened him with a gun...and got even worse when the demon swept down from the sky with gigantic wings. Innocent things that were said earlier in the evening to him are replaying in his head and now he's certain they were warnings about the demons all around him and now......

That's how it's done. You can write your answers up as detailed as you want. It can be a short story or just a small scenario like I wrote above. The important thing is to come up with a creative twist.

You can put a link to your answer or your answer itself in the comments section below. If you have any suggestions for topics for future Wednesday Weirds or any comments in general, please email me at Nuadha at SkySeaStone dot net.

Vin Diesel, Gaming Geek

From an interview on Conan O'Brien:

Conan: You have this image right now, of an action star, tough guy, but there is, for lack of a better term, maybe a slightly nerdy side to Vin Diesel, is that fair to say?
audience: *laughs*
Conan: Please don't rip my head off, reach into my neck, and pull my heart out, but... You can do that later, but.., let's just say a side of you that people might not expect.
Vin: I spent a lot of years playing a game called Dungeons and Dragons.
audience: *laughs*
Vin: Very few people know that I was rolling 20-sided dice and talking like a half-orc
Conan: You would talk in the voice when you played the game?
Vin: Oh, we completely role-played, yea.
Conan: *laughs* you're kidding?!
Vin: (in the voice of a half-orc) "How dare you!?"
Conan: That's amazing! (in a nerdy voice) "Fear not, Gandalf is on the way!"
audience: *laughs*
Conan: That's what I would be, if I was playing with you. You would not let me play with you, probably. You'd be like "that guy's too nerdy, he's gotta go."
audience: *laughs*
Conan: So you played this for like how long?
Vin: For like 24 years.
Conan: For 24 years?! *laughs* I know...
audience: *laughs*
Vin: Now I call it the training ground for imagination.
Conan: Right, well that's very...
Vin: But this was before video games. I started playing in the 70s. And, this was, I mean, I could have played Risk, Monopoly, or D&D.
Conan: Right, which was probably the cooler of those games.
Vin: I think, yea.
Conan: And you created a character for youself, didn't you?
Vin: I created a character... No one knows this, but in Triple-X, one of the tattoos, right above my belly-button, or below my belly button, I don't know why I'm saying this *hoots from audience*, was the name Melkor. And that came from a character that I had, uh..
Conan: That you created in Dungeons and Dragons?
Vin: that I created. That was a Drow witch-hunter. Double-specialized witch-hunter. but this is all
Conan: There are so many nerds watching right now who are just thrilled. Cause you're making them cool, suddenly. All these guys are watching going "Go, Vin Diesel, Go! Go!" All hail, Melkor, you know?
audience: *applause and laughter*
Conan: I think that's neat though. See that you did, see that you'll talk about it.

(From Blog, Justin Style)

Settlers of the Stone Age

Just read this review of Settlers of the Stone Age. Sounds good.

BBC's 200 Best Books

The BBC has made it's list of the 200 Best Books of all time. They are:

(I've put the ones I've read or attempted to read in bold.)

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (As many of you already know, I don't agree with this one...or three being rated so highly. Most overrated books....ever.)
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (Wow. This really was ranked high. Once again, this is a series, not one book. I was enjoying the first book, I may have to try finishing them.)
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling (Why didn't HP count as just one book like LotR and HDM?)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne (Believe it or not, one of my favorite books.)
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (I completely agree with it being in the top ten.)
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy - The man desperately needed an editor.
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck (I liked Steinbeck.)
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (I would have ranked this higher than Winnie the Pooh. It's another of my favorite kid's books that I actually didn't read until I was an adult.)
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell (Orwell rocks.)
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews

(List via Eternal Eponine)

With the amount of Sci-Fi/Fantasy books on the list, especially all the Pratchett books, I'm suprised there is no Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury on the list. I at least expected to see Farenheit 451 on the list.

Gamemastering: Going Against the Norm

I've been listening to an audio book in the car the last couple of days. The book is Basket Case by Carl Hiassen. In it, there is a scene where the main character, Jack Tagger, catches someone ransacking his house. He sneaks to the kitchen freezer and pulls out a frozen lizard he had in his freezer. Then, he catches the mook by suprise and beats on him with a frozen lizard named Colonel Tom. In the book, it was already set up why Jack had this frozen lizard in his freezer and while it was a tad weird, it made some sense. However, it occured to me how bizarre thos would be to the mook as he's fighting a guy who is swinging a frozen lizard buy its tail.

Ain't this just like real life? Weird things happen. I'm sure every professional house burglar has stories to tell where homeowners confronted them using the strangest things as weapon.

As I was thinking about the briliance of this scene, I started thinking: How often are PCs in a roleplaying game the targets of these lizard-weilding opponents?" How often does a GM throw in something that seems really odd, has nothing to do with some sinister plot or magical weirdness and has a perfectly reasonable explanation? We GMs (including myself) tend to think of the cliches. If a PC is sneaking through someone's apartment and is confronted, chances are the tenant would threaten that PC with 1) a baseball bat, 2) a pistol, or 3) a shotgun. These are the cliches in homowner protection. How many people in real life have these items near their bed, anyway? Wouldn't most people need to improvise?

I'm thinking that a little weirdness like this could go a long way in improving the memorability of a game. Are PCs going to remember that scene where they fought off Jack Taggart and his baseball bat? Probably not. Will they be talking about that crazy guy with the frozen lizard in his freezer later? You can probably count on it.

So, I'm thinking about starting up a weekly Meme. If people are interested in participating, I will start a Meme for writers and GMs where each week I will post a cliche scenario that could appear in a roleplaying game or a piece of fiction. The participants, will write their own version of this scenario where things just get a little weird. Here's the kicker. Participants should then give a somewhat plausible reason why this happen.

For example, in the book I mention above, Jack Taggart has a lizard in his freezer because it was his pet that died last year. He didn't want to throw Col. Tom out in the garbage, so he put him in the freezer until he found the right time to give Col. Tom a proper burial. A year later, he still hadn't gotten to the point where he was ready to let Tom go. When getting ready to confront the intruder, the lizard was the only good weapon he could think of.

Yeah, it's still a little weird but with other quirks Taggart has regarding death it makes sense.

So, would anybody out there be interested in poarticipating in the "Wednesday Weird"? Like Bryant's "Monday Mashup" and Ginger's "WISH" memes, participation each week would be optional. Don't have anything to write for a topic? Wait until next week. Anyone could participate simply by either replying in the comments section or posting on their own blog and linking to it below. (This blog has Trackback. So if you're using Moveable Type, it's even easier.) If at least two people show interest, I'll start the Wednesday Weird this week. If you have ideas for scenarios to tackle in the Wednesday Weird, feel free to email me at Nuadha at SkySeaStone dot net.

[EDIT- A coworker just told me about some couple he knew that had a frozen monkey in their freezer for a year because it was a pet that died and they were waiting until they moved to a new home to bury it. I guess the frozen lizard is more plausible than I even thought. A monkey!? That had to take up a lot of freezer space.]

Gaming Blogs

Two more gaming blogs, one I've been meaning to add to my links section for a bit now:

Amber's Amber

The 20' by 20' Room