Inconsistencies

So let me paint a picture for you. Its 1953 and a 55' Chevy Bel Air is tearing down the roads of the nuked husk of a city that is Chicago. Jeremy has the pedal to the metal, his hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel and shifter and his brow is pouring sweat, nonetheless he is weaving through debris at high speed in a stunning display of skill. Dan leans out the passenger side, his Tommy gun rata-tat-tatting as it sends countless slugs into Werhmacht soldiers as they try to block the road with their bodies. The wind does not dislodge his fedora. In the back seat stands a six foot tall, five hundred pound robot (me), one arm bracing the other. The braced arm is a Gatling gun and it spews a hail of rounds into a quartet of troop carriers that follows the Chevy into the ruins of Chicago. Next to the robot stands Eric with some high tech looking gauntlets on, one gauntlet flashes and obliterates the front end of a troop carrier with the beam of light it emits. The other gauntlet flashes and a hazy field of energy blinks into existence and deflects a grenade flung by a soldier from the blockade as the Chevy burns rubber through the scattered mass of Wehrmacht soldiers and heads deeper into Chicago. Possibly to fight zombies.

Edit: The only reason Laura was not mentioned above is that she did not have a character idea the other day.

Reich-5

This will be GURPS related, again.

We'll be playing a GURPS setting called Reich-5, a grim looking alternate Earth where FDR was assassinated and William Dudley Pelley became president and we were an almost outright ally of Germany in the World War II era of Earth's history. We will be fighting Nazis. Fuck. Yes.

Movie Related Interlude: I just received Band of Brothers from my mother and aunt (I thing) for Heather's wedding shower. Band of Brothers is fantastic. I love it. I watched it when Dan borrowed it to me and it has been a dream of mine to own it and watch it repeatedly ever since. I think I would really enjoy sitting around with a beer painting a few minis and watching that show, I just could never justify a sixty dollar purchase for ten hours of entertainment when I can get a season of something like Dexter or Burn notice for twenty or less. I do not own any Deadwood seasons (yet) for the same reason. I think I may need to get into some World War II movies here as part of my research for this campaign, not that our WWII has an relation whatsoever to the 1940s of the Reich-5 world. Seriously, it really doesn't other than the fact that there are Germans eager for world conquest in both worlds.

Now the problem becomes: A) Who will DM? B) What does this mean for my campaign and the interest in it? C) What the eff will I play?

A): Dan has an encyclopedic knowledge of the names, places, dates, and events of World War II. However, this is of less use than you would think because this is not our world. Most relevant names are still relevant and some places are as well. Dan has no experience DM/GMing to my knowledge though, which is something of a hindrance, especially since we're using GURPS and not d20ish system he has used before. I could do it, but I would have to do a bit of research (which I am going to do anyway), and I am already running a campaign which people seem to like. Running two campaigns seems to be a bit beyond my capabilities. (How the motherfuckers at Wizards of the Coast run two or three campaigns a piece and manage to play twice or thrice a week is unknown to me. I wonder if they can chalk it up to "playtesting" and get paid for it while they're at it.) Eric has said he could run it, but that would mean sacrificing his 4th Edition campaign, and he is apparently ok with that, and the fact that it is a pre-made setting in the "real" world is beneficial because it frees up some time that would otherwise be spent working on the background of his world.

B): I find my world extremely interesting and love it and have no intention of ending my campaign, I have some plans for my world. I just don't know how Jeff and John will feel about switching game systems mid-campaign. Although, I think I could deal with following this campaign to its natural conclusion still using the 4th Edition system. GURPS would be better, but I don't feel comfortable switching systems and having everyone buy books without trying it first. Jeremy and Eric and Dan and totally psyched about Reich-5, and I am as well, but I don't know if John gets psyched about anything and I don't know how Jeff feels about curb stomping Nazis on an alternate Earth. We'll see. I just hope Reich-5 doesn't overshadow my campaign and make it a boring footnote in our gaming history. That would bum me out.

C): Characters are my vice, as are dice. I like making them and playing them and coming up with moderately nifty backgrounds to give them, well, character. Traith Harris started as a gunslinging sorcerer with two kids and a wife that was a bard who. Is that more characterful than him being a clockwork cyborg? I do not know. All I know is that I like thinking about characters and watching them develop. Keroen evolved as I wrote about him, I had never intended for him to (SPOILER ALERTish) renege on his vow and I had always envisioned him as a stately king, not the amoral homicidal berserk he became, although he is slightly less two dimensional than that.

GURPS is very versatile and I definitely like that, with enough points you can certainly do everything to some degree, but you will not be superbly awesome at it. Anyway, basically I can be anything I want, including a robot, undead, or sentient car. Fuck...with the Alternate Form advantage I could actually be a robot that transforms into car. I love GURPS. Back to characters for Reich-5:

A character I have always enjoyed is the Shadow, as in "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men..." etc etc. I've watched the movie with Alec Baldwin several times, and own it, I kind of might like to get some of the other black and white movies, also own and enjoy the Darkman trilogy (which was Raimi's eff you to folks when he was not allowed to make a The Shadow movie himself, although he'll apparently be doing one in 2012). I've even tracked down some casette tapes and listened to the old radio show. I like it, and the character. He is a psychic gunslinger basically and that has a bit of potential for awesomeness. It's also totally doable in GURPS.

Another idea I have is an early (failure) of the Nazi eugenics experiments to create a super man. He's actually a Thing-like character in that he is something monstrous and very much a bruiser brawler type guy. Crude surgeries and chemical regimes were used to deaden or remove certain nerves in his body while his flesh was slathered in volatile chemicals, all in an attempt to inure him to pain and make him an unstoppable warrior while surgeries were done on him to implant vat grown muscle tissue into him to give him increased strength. He'd have the Numb disadvantage (I think), and probably a monstrous appearance, and he'd have all kinds of stuff like Hard To Kill and Subdue, Pain Tolerance, Damage Resistance, etc. Lots of ST and HP. He could be the resident wall of muscle of the group. I'd make him German, with his backstory possibly being that he served his country and they cast him aside and tried to euthanize him when they thought him a failure. He does not fight the Nazis out of vengeance though, he believes they must be stopped because if they cast him aside despite his loyalty to the fatherland and the fact that he is an experiment that cost them millions of Reichsmarks, what would they do to the common man of Deutschland if they felt it was necessary? I'd probably give him a Code of Honor and a few other things to indicate that he is not a mindless brute. I'd probably try to work in a martial arts style as well so that he isn't just slugging the fuck out of shit, he's actually a competent fighter and understands tactics.

The third idea is just a guy, a crushed down and dispirited citizen of Amerika who has taken to the streets (or the Rockies as the case may be) to pick up a gun like his forefathers and put a round or two into a Kraut. I would make him something of a woodsman type or whatever you want to call it, someone living "off the grid" maybe with Patton or MacArthur, assuming we "adventure" in the time period where they are still alive. I would make everything about him within the human norm, but he would be exceptionally skilled at what he does (shooting, tracking, stealth, etc).

The one that I seem to be gravitating towards is the big dude who is resistant to damage and I am not sure why. At his core he is just the brawler of the group he hits people until there are holes in them. I mean, The Shadow modelled character would be a gunfighter and have fancy pants psychic powers of some kind. That's pretty neat. I dunno, I was just sitting here and I got this image of this guy who called himself Zugspitze smoking a cigar or something and being chained up and interviewed by American rebels. The idea has altered though, his concern is not for the people of Deutschland, but for what the Nazis have locked away in their labs. He's seen things, things even Nazi/SS/etc indoctrination cannot make him to ignore. He is a traitor, not because of his treatment or his fears for the common man's safety, he is a traitor because he fears what the Nazis will in the end make of this world (and others, depending on our placement in the Reich-5 timeline).

Ah well, we shall see.

Music: SModcast 90: Forgeticus! - Kevin Smith & Scott Mosier

Music: Thank You - Led Zeppelin

Music: War Pigs - Black Sabbath

The Campaign That Will Never Be

So, I made myself via the GURPSystem because of something I briefly said to Jeremy earlier today when he, Eric, and I were hanging out. I've given myself 50 (plus up to 25 more from disadvantages) points as GURPS Lite listed as ordinary folks. I chose the top end of the "ordinary folks" spectrum because its a game and there must be some sensationalism/fanciness to a mundane proto-hero.

Core Stuff
Clint Ruediger
26
5'8" 190 lbs.

29 [44/-15]
ST: 11 HP: 11
DX: 10 Will: 10
IQ: 10 Per: 10
HT: 11 FP: 11

Reasoning: Tens are average, I gave myself an eleven in Strength because I have been working out of late, and I gave myself an eleven in Health because I rarely get sick and when I do, I can usually push through and overcome it fairly quickly. I left Dexterity and Intelligence at ten because I am pretty average on those fronts, and could probably stand to lose some points in Dexterity because I have at times just randomly lost my balance and fallen over. I didn't put any information in for Basic Move, Speed, Lift, etc because all of it is based off the core stats and I've explained my views on those. As far as looks, wealth, etc I consider myself average so I didn't include explanations of point totals for that either.

Advantages
Hard To Subdue 2 [4]
Less Sleep 2 [4]
No Hangover [1]
Unfazeable [15]

Reasoning: I've given myself Hard To Subdue (at max for "average" folks) only because I cracked my skull extremely hard (there was blood) against the corner of an ambulance cabinet door yesterday and only barely managed to remain conscious and not fall out of the ambulance. I've given myself Less Sleep because I regularly get by on five to seven hours of sleep and rarely get a full eight. I've thrown in Unfazeable because I find myself going "Of course that would happen..." when something unexpected or surprising happens at work or at home and I adapt to the situation and move on. No Hangover is in there because I've only ever once in my life had a hangover and I still believe the nausea was the result of a questionable McDonald's breakfast and not excessive drinking. My mom disagrees.

Disadvantages
Bad Sight (Farsighted, Mitigator: Glasses): -15

Reasoning: I've given myself Bad Sight for obvious reasons.

Ok, so that is vaguely reminiscent of me. Now it is time to make it vaguely reminiscent of me if I were a young farmer in a Cinematic Adventure about to lose my family and home to the Evil-Fuck-Villain and become Hot Shit on my Epic Quest to take VENGEANCE (VENGEANCE is such an awesome word that it deserves all caps).

Core Stuff
Rutger
26
5'8" 190 lbs.

50 [75/-25]
ST: 11 HP: 11
DX: 10 Will: 10
IQ: 10 Per: 10
HT: 11 FP: 11

Reasoning:

Advantages
Hard To Subdue 2 [4]
Less Sleep 2 [4]
No Hangover [1]
Claws (Blunt) [3]
Trained By A Master [30]

Reasoning: Despite being fresh meat I have given this guy Trained By A Master. I'm not too sure on the specifics, but I think I have an idea of Rutger here hearing some noises down an alley. These noises are a dying master, and being a pragmatic sort Rutger decides to rob the fellow. Said fellow is no normal man and is not quite dead enough to let himself be robbed with impunity and surprises Rutger, Rutger stabs or otherwise seals the master's fate. Here is where things get wonky. Master is not a good and kind master, master is fleeing and has just had his ass kicked by other masters, master is the last of his obviously Evil and Machiavellian School of Masters Dedicated To That Sort of Thing. The master decides that the only way his lineage can live on is through this little shit that finished him off for a few coins, so he transfers his power (and bits and pieces of himself) to this Little Shit. The Claws (Blunt) along with some skills and techniques listed below simulate the first hazy recollections of the master's knowledge, the Claws are actually the result of skin toughening techniques that Rutger has begun to practice that have made his fingers more weapon-like. I removed Unfazeable because I wanted to free up some points for Trained By A Master.

Disadvantages
Struggling: [-10]
Nightmares: [-5]
Bad Temper [-10]

Reasoning: Nightmares are parts of the master's gifts to Rutger, when he sleeps he constantly relives the murderous and unethical deeds of the master, sometimes he can shrug them off and ignore them, other times they are too intense. I removed the Farsightedness because it is unnecessarily true to the real me, this is a game after all (If I had more points I would opt to whittle away at the disadvantage through adventuring, rather than pull it now, and chalk it up to the mystic body control techniques that Rutger begins to recall). Bad Temper represents the latent pieces of the master's evil personality creeping into Rutger and forcing him to work at controlling himself. Struggling is there to indicate that he is a poor dumb sod with little money and that is what led him to get all messed up in the brain by an evil master of martial arts.

Perks
Style Familiarity (Pankration) [1]

Reasoning: I've read a little bit about Pankration in the past and its kind of neat, like most martial arts are, and its not all jumpy flippy I'm a fucking monkey. It seems to be more about brutal wrestling moves than anything else. They get in close, lock up an arm in a hold, then tear it the fuck off.

Styles
Pankration (10 points in style)

Skills
Games (Pankration) IQ/Easy: 10 [1]
Judo DX/Hard: 8 [1]
Karate DX/Hard: 8 [1]
Wrestling DX/Average: 9 [1]
Urban Survival Per/Average: 10 [2]

Techniques
Hammer Fist (Karate -1/Average): 8 [1]
Kicking (Karate -2/Hard): 7 [2]
Stamp Kick (Karate -2/Hard): 7 [2]
Knee Strike (Karate -1/Average): 8 [1]

Style Perks
Iron Hands (DR 1, Partial, Hands, Tough Skin) [1]

Reasoning: Most of the above is obviously related to the Pankration thing. As Rutger adventures he'll gain more weird martial arts crap as he "remembers" what the master once knew, stuff like Pressure Points, Meditaion, other techniques, more stats and advantages to simulate the toughness of his body, etc, etc. Urban Survival is the one skill he really had in the first place prior to his encounter and I've left it in place. If the option is available, I would slowly degrade it as he adventures out of cities and redistribute the points into other skills he picks up along the way.

So, there is a basic stripped down GURPS version of me and a cinematic about-to-start-an -adventure me. I like creating characters in GURPS, it is a lot more involved and thought provoking than DnD. The Advantage/Disadvantage balance forces you to think about the character a bit and possibly get some ideas on role-playing. Fun stuff.

Fun Times Indeed

Random Writing Update: At this very moment Traith Harris has stormed a building full of hell-kin, suffered the flames of sorcery, and has the barrel of one of his revolvers between the teeth of the sorcerer. He intends on really really fucking shit up.

So today I decided to start converting my DnD campaign into GURPS and I have to say, its a bit of fun. I started with something simple, creating templates for the races. I started with the soulless and I've got to say that the rules and suggestions for disadvantages and advantages for them that I've compiled are extremely satisfying. I've given them most of the advantages/disadvantages suggested for the Robot Meta-Trait and they work very nicely. For instance, I've given them the -30 point disadvantage of unhealing, i.e. they do not heal and cannot be healed by any normal physical means. They can be healed by the Mechanic Repair skill though. You cannot do that in 4th Edition. They also do not eat (robot), breathe (robot), sleep (robot), or "wear out" (infused with preserving necromantic energies). Wear out is the robot version of aging. When I based the soulless on warforged my thought was that it fit the concept I had for the race of undead robots pretty well, using the GURPS rules I feel that the fit is pretty nearly perfect. This is a good thing.

The whole GURPS character creation system is insanely fun. Reading through all the advantages and disadvantages and quirks is interesting and a hoot. There's such a plethora of options to choose from that (within reason and points allowances) you can create anything you want. Part of what I love about RPGs in general is just plugging stuff in and picking and choosing talents/feats/etc and the GURPS set up is like some sort of mystical vista I was always seeking. I could literally create Keroen Skathos out of all this stuff, from his regeneration and unstoppable physical strength to his ability to jaunt through space (and to a lesser extent time). I mean, to play the Nel, all we have to do is up the points level of the campaign and say magic and psionics are The Gifts of Keroen and that a certain portion of your points have to go to certain abilities like Unaging and various resistances and regeneration. With the Thaumatology book we can even pick out a certain school or subset of magic that is the Gifts and say the rest is magic, or vice versa.

The beauty is that most of the 3rd Edition GURPS stuffs seems compatible with the 4th Edition GURPS stuff. I'm new to all this and I have read that this is not true of the guns and some other aspects, but at the very least it is a good source of inspiration and an idea to start out from. This means that there is quite literally a metric shit ton of material to work with for this game.

Cost/value analysis time: I compared some prices and page counts of the DnD and GURPS supplements (full prices, not deals on eBay or Amazon). The GURPS books tend to be more expensive, but also bigger. That said, the GURPS books weigh in at about fifteen cents per page and the DnD books go for about eighteen cents per page. I think. These only apply to sourcebooks, not core books. Both systems create really big core/starter/whatever set of books for a decent price. I intend on investigating this issue further in an attempt to sell Tony on the system. If there is a huge amount of meat to the books and not empty spaces and silly graphics for no good reason in the GURPS books, I don't think the cost will really matter to him.

I know the name GURPS, I've even looked at some books before, I don't know why I've never gotten all bent out of shape about it like this before. I think maybe I'm just looking for something new. DnD has always been High Fantasy, capital aych capital eff. Eberron can pretend its "pulp" or "noir" but it isn't. Its High Fantasy where they pretend that having mini-golems and alternate cosmologies and arcane economies makes them special. I've read some Eberron stuff and don't get me wrong, its as neat and cool as Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance. Its not breaking any molds though. Spelljammer broke a mold. Dark Sun came close. Planescape violated the molds and then burned them to the ground. As I was saying, I've been looking for something different.

I enjoy the fact that there is an empire of undead humans who have undead robots as their slaves. That tickles my insides and, ta-da, its different. Orcs in my campaign are the most advanced race around, not the stereotype they've been forever cast as. The elves of my world are either A) the descendants of a race of energy vampires or B) a race of bloodthirsty immortal Viking-esque cannibals. Different than ye age olde fantasy tropes.

Is my setting breaking any molds? I dunno. Nor do I particularly care. I made it the way it is because I like it that way. Is there too much wacky shit in it? Probably. Again, I did it the way I did it for a reason. I like it. I think with the GURPSystem I'll be able to do everything I want to do in my campaign without having to hammer it into the confines of 4th Edition. We'll see. Everyone may say "fuck you" if I ask them to change systems, and the group may fall apart anyways. Again, we'll see.

Music: Part 4 - Penny Arcade/PVP DnD Podcast Series 1

On GURPS

Oh. Fuck. Yes.

Another One (Because I Am A Verbose Motherfucker, In Terms of Text)

So, I like d20 Modern and its various additions. I think it is a solid system that works fairly well. Except for the Wealth system, which is kind of neat at first, but rather annoying the more you get into it. Instead of finding a safe full of six grand and seven grand worth of uncut cocaine, you find +2 to each of your Wealth scores. LAME. Tony went to the effort of converting everything in the core d20 Modern book into actually dollars. EVERYTHING. I don't think anyone thanked him. I have trouble understanding why people don't get why he is burnt out on gaming.

I think if the gaming group does break down and nobody can ever game I might try to run d20 Modern with just John (because he will always and forever game), Jeremy, and Eric. I think it has potential, besides, how often in action or adventure movies do you see a party of eight dudes doing stuff? John McClane fucked shit up across four feature length films all by his lonesome. That's what d20 Modern is supposed to be, a little bit more focus on the action and intensity. This is not to say it was designed to be a "go kill shit" type deal, its just supposed to be explosive and dynamic.

I don't know precisely how it would work, but I would really like to try out a fantasy setting with the d20 Modern rules. Not Urban Arcana, just d20 Modern/Past and some elements of Apocalypse with Future/Future Tech thrown in to represent steampunk devices. Obviously I'm speaking of my The Known World campaign. I should come up with name for the planet so I can call it that. I think it started at as the Torem Campaign, but Torem is like Latin or some shit for balance and the kernel of an idea that I was going on there is now gone and the setting has no relation to the initial intent behind that name. Then I called it Tomre, because why the fuck not? Now all the info for this world sits in a folder in my 4th Edition Campaigns folder called "What The Fuck?" and the campaign beneath it is known as "Why The Fuck Not?" I guess I'm just funny.

I feel a change coming to DnD. 4th Edition was supposed to be an agent of this change, a revitalization of our hobby and place to start off fresh as a group of noobs. To a certain extent this has been achieved and let me say one more time that I really like 4th Edition, but I feel that 4th Edition just does not cut it for my campaign. Its too imperfect. I wonder if perhaps now is the time to switch to something setting neutral like Iron Heroes or True 20 Roleplaying. Something familiar, but with a twist. Or even if we take something that has a setting, like d20 Deadlands, its close enough to DnD and could be slightly modified to fit into my campaign world.

Or is now the time where we REALLY change things up and switch to something like GURPS. 4th Edition sourcebooks have names like Open Grave and Arcane Power and Martial Power and Forgotten Realms Player's Guide. GURPS has sourcebooks with names like Steampunk and Screampunk and Biotech and High-Tech. Its all skill based and all generic and compatible as well.

Or Shadowrun, although that is incompatible with my current campaign. I'm not going to lie, Shadowrun gives me a raging hardon that you could cut glass with.

I guess I need to say it again: Fuck. This hurts my brain.

Music: Liar - Henry Rollins Band

Oh Fiddlesticks

Gaming is looking grim for August, this saddens me. A lot. I know everyone is still interested, but schedule conflicts seem like they are a big impediment. I'm not sure how long that will persist, we'll see. Even if schedules no longer become a problem, Eric and Jeff will be enrolling in institutions of higher learning and Josh will be wandering away to the Navy to get his "free" (HA!) schooling. Which means schedules will be a complication again, and we will be down a person. Seems like gaming is in a coma and on its way to checking out permanently. Seems fitting that when I finally get my shit together and we get a sweet group together that it's schedules and important shit that kills gaming, and not my lack of interest. Maybe ironic rather than fitting. We'll see how things turn out though. I have the entire internet at my fingertips and there is a site called EN World that is a gamer haven for all kinds of pen and paper RPGs (the majority of their content is DnD centric though) and they have sections that put gamers together based on location. Not sure how I'd feel about bringing in total unknowns, but nerds/geeks are what they are for the most part. No LARPers though.

...I wonder if we could get Dan back into it.
...Or Tony too, I sense he is not violently opposed to the idea, but I think he'd have to sit down and get into it for that to really happen and as long as he avoids physically gaming he won't be into it.

I had my little crisis of system use the other day, but I think I've pretty well gotten over it. Everything I want to do can be done in 4th Edition, just not as often as I like basically. The example I go to once more is the ray gun. Yes, the ray gun will do fire damage when used for ranged attacks, at least when used with martial powers. However, if you are trained in the Technomancy skill you will be able tweak the settings on the motherfucker and cause a ranged burst attack in addition to the normal effects of your power, this will only be usable once per day. The steam rifle will have a similar situation, normal attacks will push targets, once per encounter you can not a target prone.

I think I just started freaking out over nothing. I kind of tend to get fixated on one little aspect or something, then blow it out or proportion. I think that's part of why I get so easily frustrated by gaming and whatnot. One little thing gets stuck in my mind like a grain of sand and becomes big deal and drives me crazy.

Music: Demise - Hawkwind