Curiousity

So, I've been listening to this podcast called Role-Playing public radio for a while now. They have a pretty robust selection of actual plays and regular old topic-oriented content. Their actual plays are a lot of fun for me because I don't play very often, certainly not as much as I'd like to, I mean that in general terms, not in a "I always GM" way.

Anyway, they do a lot of neat stuff that ranges from talking about building ambiance and good npcs to game sessions at Gen Con or Fear the Con or the main guy's regular at home sessions with his gaming group. What I really like is the exposure to other systems that I'm getting. They do Call of Cthulhu, Mutants and Masterminds, GURPS, 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, Wild Talents, Monsters and Other Childish Things, and a few others I think.

What I find neat is that Monsters and Other Childish Things gaming system. At first I ignored those podcasts because I have no interest whatsoever really in playing a kid at school doing kiddly things. I only started listening to them because I was kind of having a dry spell on podcasts and I wanted to build up a buffer to run through.

I started listening to it and I'm finding the system to be a neat concept. It all seems to be based on the relationship between the child and their friends and family, and especially their monster. Kids have monsters, and they're monster monsters. The ones I've heard described so far were an enormous snake with more snakes for hands, a giant shark god thing, a swarm of giant rats, a diesel chugging thing called Truckhammerzilla (which was glorious), and a giant Cthulhlian teddy bear with claws and teeth and red eyes and a felt heart on its belly covered in unspeakable drippings.

Being a kid doing kiddly things probably isn't cool in an RPG, doing so with a fucking teddy bear birthed from the same black womb as Cthulhu, kind of cool. So cool in fact that I started thinking of an idea for a monster called Mr. Tuftyears. He's a giant black koala bear in a trenchcoat and fedora with red eyes and large fangs and claws. I kind of tried working him out with the Allies advantage or the Dependant (the kid) disadvantage in GURPS because I don't have any Monsters and Other Childish Things books.

So, in closing: Role-Playing Public Radio is kind of awesome and Monsters and Other Childish Things is a pretty nifty concept.

Presentation of Information

I've been hard at work on a few things (school, scenario, some writing odds and ends, etc), so I haven't been posting as much lately, I hope you'll forgive me.

I'm about an hour away from finishing the eighth scenario in our The Known World campaign and I'm pretty pleased with how it is going. I'm trying to force myself into becoming one of those GMs that is able to come up with details off the top of their head. I've decided I want to game more often, and to do that I need to slim my scenario data down as much as I can without leaving things vague. I don't need a paragraph of text for every room in the scenario, I just need a general impression of what it looks like and may or may not contain. If the players take an interest in the fixtures, I can just say "They're nice well taken care of brass, looks like they're regularly polished and dusted." rather than write that or a variation of it down for a few dozen rooms and whatnot.

I'm also working on a different method of organizing the data for the scenario as well. Rather than writing out every word an NPC might have cause to say, I just write out a general guideline of what they want to say, their personality, and what they may or may not need to hide from the players. This allows me to work from something that is informative and reminds me of the purpose of the NPC, but it keeps me from having two paragraphs of possible dialog options for them. I don't know, maybe it will help me organize things better, rather than just spam data. Anyone that has seen what I write for DnD has seen that I have lots of information to give people, but spend very little time organizing it into a format that is easily absorbed by others. I guess I'm doing all kinds of experimentation with this particular scenario. We'll see how everything goes.

On the GURPS front, we're supposed to be playing Eric's first scenario after his birthday in April, which is about nine months after we all got together and decided we were going to play some GURPS in the Reich-5 setting. I've accepted that fact, but I still think everyone should be aware of it. I still have no real handle on what I want to play, other than something psionic. I have an idea for playing a psychically potent brain in a jar or a "living" radiation shadow, but I dunno how practical they'll be. I dunno, whatever. I did speak to Dan and Laura the other night about GURPS and how it relates to my campaign world, and they both agreed that it might be fun to join up for that. This means that if the current group continues on to GURPS plus Dan and Laura, we have a group of eight players and a GM. Holy shitfuck. For that group I might seriously need another GM.

I've already started a bit of work on the true conversion to GURPS for my campaign world. It works pretty well. I've got two races down and so far I am able to keep the amount of data spammed at the players to a minimum. Its basically, ok, this is what the race is about, this is what they have to have to be this race, and here are some suggestions. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that theme of only the most pertinent details being thrown at the players. The extra stuff is good to throw into the ZuluPad thing, or in the story that Eric, Jeremy, and I are posting back and forth. I guess I'm realizing that it is better to let the players be curious about something, and ask questions or investigate it on their own, rather than throw three thousands words of text at them telling them everything they'll ever need to know.

On the writing front, I've started two new stories. One called Fear of Water which is about the Nel after the events of The Last Blade that will very likely get canned until I feel like picking up the Nel again. The other is Soulless, a collection of short stories about a certain soulless that kind of chronicle his life and adventures. Actually, I've started three, not two. The third one is called Rebels and I don't find myself liking it at all, so it will probably not go anywhere. I dunno. I like to write and I'm writing, so I guess I can't complain.

I also have an idea for a mini I'd like to play around with and work on. I'll have to order some bits though, because the model pieces I need are fantasy bits and not 40k bits.

Edit After The Fact: I was twenty minutes from finishing the scenario. I still have to review everything and write out the Walthuler missive though, so it may end up being an hour. We'll see.

Music: Killer Queen - Queen

Music: Stone Cold Crazy - Queen