4. March 2010 by Samldanach.

IMO, any post title that has me singing Sting lyrics is a good one.

In working on my new PA setting, I came to a startling conclusion.  Our information-based infrastructure is like a gigantic balloon.  Press it at any point, and it will give.  Remove the pressure, and it will rebound.  But pop it, and it cannot be repaired.  It can only be rebuilt from scratch.

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26. February 2010 by Samldanach.

So, I’ve been kicking around taking the work I did on d20 Rifts and porting it to the “MasterCraft” system (making it a variant of Spycraft 2.0 instead of Spycraft 1.0 and incorporating elements of FantasyCraft).  However, if I did so, I’d want to toss it over the fence to the guys at Crafty, which means I need to seriously file the serial numbers off the setting.

So, how else do you make a gonzo, kitchen-sink, post-apocalyptic setting?

My first idea (a series of mega-crises rather than one big event, plus a pretty awesome idea for introducing aliens) didn’t work.  Not kitchen-sink-y enough.  I had a fabulous explanation for non-human intelligences wandering around.  But, I had to hand-wave the introduction of both magic and psionics.  It was way too forced.

Percy Jackson, oddly enough, prompted the seed for the new idea.  Some time in the late 21st century (long enough for super-tech to be invented, short enough for the society to have not gone to singularity and become unrecognizable), the Second Coming of Christ occurs.  He is the child of both the line of Jesus (borrowing from Holy Blood, Holy Grail and suchlike) and the line of Fatima (and hence Mohammed).  (Being of the line of Jesus also, obviously, makes him of the House of David.)  He is the Messiah for all three Abrahamic faiths, uniting them for the endtimes.

He is opposed, however, by scions (see what I did there?) of other faiths.  The Norse Gods see this same time as Ragnarok.  The Greek Gods see the return of the Titans (*cough*Dark Inheritance*cough*).  Shiva the Destroyer returns.  I think you get the idea.  The point is, god war.

After several bloody, destructive years, the gods drive each other from the Earth, leaving the wrecked shell to the relative handful of surviving mortals.  They also leave behind two other gifts.  First, some of the gods indulged in shore leave while fighting the war, and left a passel of half-divine children behind.  By the time the setting proper begins, the bloodlines of those children are effectively psions.  Second, the knowledge of how to work true magic has returned to the world.  Oh, and they one other legacy: several creatures of myth now wander the world.  That is more curse than gift, though.

Two other quirky bits.  Artificial intelligences were created and became self-sustaining before the god war.  So, you can play a robot (some are just brains in boxes, but I’m not sure those are really playable), or a cyborg with a pet AI sharing your body.  Second, genetic engineering was on the verge of a massive breakthrough.  One of the surviving societies is able to grow carefully manipulated Genetically AUgmented Beings (known generally as GAUBlins) in vats.  Gaublins are treated more like clever livestock than even slaves, despite having human-level intelligence.

One area has also developed the ability to create massive robot vehicles, that run on bio-diesel and magic.  They have animal-level spirits bound to them, helping to animate and control them.

So, let’s see.  Psions, mages, ordinary humans, cyborgs, genetically-enhanced humans, robots, robot vehicles, monsters.  Tech levels will range from hunter-gatherer/cargo cult level, to a typically early industrial age, and in a few areas up to post-modern.  One of the sky gods ripped down all the satellites from orbit, destroying the global communications infrastructure, and no one has put together the resources to start lifting satellites back into orbit.  (This serves to isolate settlements from one another, an important element.)

Have I left anything out?

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2. February 2010 by Samldanach.

From the ever-excellent Rob Donoghue…

Even if you are a crazy person, you need to manage your brand.

ESPECIALLY if you’re a crazy person.

Look, I know that you don’t think you’re crazy, and that this obviously doesn’t apply to you, but just think about how people respond to what you say. It’s not about whether you are crazy, it’s about whether people think you’re crazy. And if they think you’re crazy, they’re not going to listen to the incredibly important truths that you have seen which need to be shared. In this, truth is like craziness - it doesn’t matter if it’s so, it just matters what people think.

So, if you have some Powerful Truths to share, you owe it to yourself and the world to stop and think about how you present them. If you can’t present them in a way that people will listen to, then you have failed. No one will see the truth because you were too proud to learn how to communicate. You will get dismissed as “crazy” by the people who don’t understand the truth. This may not bother you personally because you understand that you are above their petty assessments, but the problem is not a personal one. If you are perceived as a “Crazy Guy,” that creates a barrier to you getting your message out.

The key is that your unique insight comes with a responsibility to learn to communicate in a way that gets people to listen. That might mean less profanity or laying a foundation for you argument before presenting a conclusion or making sure the sources you cite are held in equal esteem by your audience. This may be frustrating: most of the people you’re talking to are clearly not smart enough to understand what you’re telling them, but if you cannot communicate your idea to lesser minds, you’ve just written off most of the world.

If you don’t take that responsibility, they will never understand.

So man up. Communication skills are trivial to learn compared to the things you already grasp. It may feel like you’re hobbling yourself at first, but just remember that most people aren’t ready to handle the full weight of understanding all at once - it would be like trying to drink from a fire hose. But if you can regulate the flow, then you can bring them around to comprehension by offering them truth a sip at a time, until they discover a thirst they didn’t know was there, and start -asking- you for more.

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26. January 2010 by Samldanach.

Rather than posting the recap here, I’m just going to redirect you to the site:

http://sites.google.com/site/carducciimmagini/hawaii-2009-2010

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25. January 2010 by Samldanach.

So, I’ve got a friend who is big into Dr. Who fanfic, including the occasional NC-17 bit.  I bumped into another old friend online that reminded me that, once upon a time, I used to write quite a bit of erotica.  I’ve wanted to do more writing for a while.

So, I wrote this story.  It was harder than I expected.  Both because I am a bit rusty on the style, and because I’m a bit pickier about the actual writing now.  But, it’s here.  I’d love some feedback.

As a note, this is NC-17, NSFW, for adults only, and probably illegal in some Southern states.  So, fair warning.  There’s nothing in here that requires any specific warnings, though.

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15. January 2010 by Samldanach.

I haven’t abandoned this blog by any means.  I will be posting the trip wrap-up from Hawaii.  I will be posting a couple short stories I wrote (one needs a rewrite first).  I have a new RPG setting idea to toss out (really a refinement of an older one).  I want to review Avatar and Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (both good, but not great, movies).  I want to talk about some other gaming concepts.  I’ve got other things buzzing in my brain.  I want to do a “state of the union” post.

First, I have to get my job to calm down.

Gah.

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18. December 2009 by Samldanach.

I ran across an odd statement this morning:  “Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe.”

I think that might be true.   I’ve done quite a bit of reading on and off over the years, attempting to really capture the medieval mindset.  One thing that is radically different is that very few people in medieval times were taught to question.  This is the way the world is, and you just have to deal with that.  But, as a consequence of that, people were very willing to let mysteries be mysterious.  You didn’t have to work out how the magician does his trick, or uncover the hidden meanings behind the storyteller’s tales, or know the lengths that a king must go to to provide for his people.

Things just happened.  And that was awesome.

People were allowed to just sit back and marvel in the simple wonder of the experience, whether that be religious, fantastic, or more prosaic.  A thunderstorm was powerful and emotionally moving.  This was not just because it spoke to the tiny hindbrain that still hadn’t caught up to the evolution of safe and snug shelter.  But, because no one, no one, knew what was actually making all the sounds, or where the winds came from.  Mysterious beings venting their frustrations made as much sense as any other explanation.

These days, it is much harder to simply revere the world around us.  We know too much.  We are given warning of the thunderstorm days in advance, often along with a description of why it is forming.  It blunts the emotional punch.  Further, we are now conditioned from a young age to ask questions.  Especially here in the US, we are taught, both explicitly and implicitly, that it is right to challenge authority and tradition.  That to sit on our butts and not try to learn about the world around us is lazy and wrong.  As much as I respect and cherish that attitude, I think that it does get in the way of simple reverence.  The person who has a garden filled with flowers “just because they’re pretty” is often mocked for not thinking more deeply about her choices.

What is wrong with appreciating things on a simple level?  Can we accept the beauty, power, or ability of a person or thing without having to dig deeper?  I think that we can.  And, I think that it is occasionally good to do so.  But, I think that for us poor modern sods, reverence is now something that takes conscious effort.  We have to decide to allow our jaded brains to relax, and just soak in the experience.

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10. December 2009 by Samldanach.

I have a bunch of things pinging around in my head currently.  So, maybe the month of blogging was good for me.  I think I’m about ready to start writing pretty frequently again.

So, I’m still kind of digging the system concept I was working on before.  I still need to post up a few more thoughts on it before they flit away.  I also want to make sure that I pare the system down pretty ruthlessly.  I have a tendency to want to add more and more complexity to a system, just to have nifty toys to play with.  In this case, I explicitly want a game that is not heavily detailed.  That’s going to be a real challenge for me.

OTOH, I am currently very enamored with FantasyCraft.  It’s an awesome system.  And, it does have a huge number of fiddly bits.  So, I would like to pour my tendencies towards detail into that.

The basic problem is that it’s hard to work on both at the same time.  I’m not sure my brain will split that way.  It would be easier if I had a setting to work with.

Hmm, I still have 7 Kingdoms kicking around.  Maybe I’ll try to apply FantasyCraft to it as a “generic fantasy” setting.   I’ll also apply my new system to it as a “Renaissance-era supers” setting.

I have a Rifts clone that I’m working on.  I really want to use FantasyCraft (or, more correctly, MasterCraft, the base rules) to do that.  Especially as I already did a bunch of work to convert Spycraft 1.0 to work with Rifts.  And, the more I look at it, the more I don’t feel I can adequately model the world with the looseness of my new system.  (That may be a flaw with the system, or it may be a flaw with my thinking.)

Day before yesterday, though, I had a braingasm.  I’ve started reading Doc Savage, which has my pulp tendencies flaring up again.  A setting that has been percolating in the back of my head for years suddenly had a lightning bolt flash through it.  Actually, I should say Flash through it.  It is heavily based on the Flash Gordon universe, especially as depicted in the 1980 movie.  Not coincidentally, one of the first D&D campaigns I was ever in was based on it in a very similar way.

Elevator pitch:  A slightly mad and ludicrously powerful Emperor rules an entire reality as very nearly a god.  He “collects” other worlds.  He smashes the planet apart, then takes the best bits and sets them floating in the vast nothingness of his realm.  His Empire has combined the best that each world has to offer, creating a fusion of science, magic, and other forces that powers his civilization.  His subjects include an inconceivable variety of beings.  The PCs are the usual band of misfits, trying to carve out a niche for themselves in this decadent jigsaw madhouse of a realm.

It will have a very strong pulp sci-fi flavor to it.   Fortune favors the bold.  Anything you can imagine is out there somewhere, both for good and for ill.  The PCs can be literally anything they want to be, from cyborgs to barbarians, from Jedi to faeries, from superhero to devil.  Magic, religion, super-science, psionics, genetic engineering, and more will all get mashed up together in a marvelous kitchen sink.

This will work exceptionally well with my new system.  Once I flesh it out, I might also do alternative write-ups for using FATE 3.0 and PDQ# (which just published a space opera variant, handily enough).  Both would also work well for it.

See what I mean?  All kinds of ideas going on up there.  And that’s just the gaming stuff I want to write about…

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30. November 2009 by Samldanach.

Well, this one is going to be quick. Mostly because I am typing it up Monday morning, and am feeling decidedly ooky. I will spare you the TMI.

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30. November 2009 by Samldanach.

Well, we are Americans. And, in the immortal words of our President, “Yes, we Cannes!”

It’s a good thing you can’t actually throw things at me over the internet.

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