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robotnik2004Well, I was going great guns on the Xmas GILT exchange (that's "Games I'd Like To", with the final verb left up to you—"Run"? "Play"? "Pretend Never Existed"?), until stupid Xmas itself got in the way. The rest of you probably woke up on Christmas morning and ran to your stockings to see the shiny new game ideas inside, only to find a lump of coal or Silver Age Sentinels. It's just like that animated special they always show in December, The Year ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
robotnik Ruined Christmas. But wait! It's actually more like that animated special they always show in early January, The Year robotnik Eventually Saved Christmas. At least if you are jeregenest, mgrasso, jeffwik, or head58. And if your expectations were nice and low to begin with. These aren't as fully developed as the earlier ones: I'm just pointing in a direction I feel confident you each could go. Call it "Game Ideas I'd Like You To Come Up With," if you like. Hey, if I could do erudite eliptony like Jeremiah or fantasy mind-breakers like Jeff I'd run these games myself.
Jerry Potter and the Reptoid's Throne
It should come as little surprise that the GM among us who stumped me all this time wasjeregenest. What idea does one give to the man who has everything? And what kind of game does one propose to a polymath as prickly and formidable as Jeremiah? Courage and inspiration came to me only after I remembered that the original design spec here was "Games I'd Like You To Run," not "Games You'd Like To Run." I remember Jere saying that he'd never run a game in a licensed setting—never had, and never would. I understand the sentiment, but it really could be fun to let him loose on one of the old genre chestnuts. Like, say, the most over-exposed children's fantasy of the last decade.
Hear me out here. Ajeregenest Harry Potter game is really not as goofy as it sounds. The scholastic setting is perfect for Jere. One of the big plusses of any of his games is that no matter what weird and esoteric topic comes up in play, he's likely to know all about it, be highly opinionated on the subject, and have six hardcover books he'd be happy to lend you as background. The only corresponding danger is that (if you're not chrislehrich) you'll occasionally find yourself a little out of your depth. But make the PCs wet little Hogwarts frosh and the NPCs dour schoolmasters and, avada kedavra! you've just leveraged that dynamic into your game. Now, I think we'd have to set it in an era other than Harry Potter's bland modernity. Maybe an Edwardian Hogwarts. I know Jeremiah likes that era, and that would let us tap the original Edith Nesbit goodness that J.K. Rowling is just watering down anyway. And of course, I wouldn't expect our man Jeremiah to stick to anybody's canon. If half the fun of this game would be sitting at Jere's knee while he expounded on Basic Gematria and Decans 101, the other half would be peeling back the swotty skin of the Potterverse to reveal the howling gulfs of horror and thousand-year conspiracies he'd planted within.
Did I mention Jere would be using Sorcerer?
Mekong Delta Green
I haven't had a chance to play in any ofmgrasso's games yet (as you know, he runs so very few), so I have to draw some inferences from gaming with him as a player and from hearing about his games (as you also know, he's very a private person. doesn't share much on his LJ. very hush hush). Some of the big plusses in an mgrasso game, I'm certain, include the lush historical settings, the richly detailed characters, and Mike's impressive thespian talents. The only minuses, as far as I can see? Well, how can I put this? There seem to be a lot of... faeries in his games. (Insert your own joke here. Yes, you know you want to. Might I suggest some variation on "...and I'm not just talking about the players," followed by a vaudeville rim-shot or a "thank you, I'll be here all week"?) Faeries or variations on the theme. Changelings, the fae, brownies, nixies, men in tights... I have a theory about why this is so. It goes like this: Mike likes girls. In particular, girls who like faeries. (Again, I'll just stand back and let you make any jokes that you think might need making.) And I am not criticizing him for this at all. On the contrary, it seems to be working for him like gangbusters. But man cannot live on fairy bread alone. And should there ever come a day when Mike wants to run something a little more macho? Well, this will be waiting for him.
There aren't many RPG settings more testosterone-soaked than Delta Green. And Mike is probably the only other member of our pod who shares the intensity of my love for that setting. (Well, I knowbluegargantua digs Delta Green too, but he still hasn't Friended almost any of us, so nertz to him.) It's not just one of my favorite RPG settings, or even one of my favorite works of secret/alternate history in general. To me, the two Delta Green sourcebooks constitute a significant subcultural artifact of the 1990s. I'm not saying they rank with The Simpsons or Pulp Fiction, but they're on a par with Weezer's Blue Album or Might Magazine. They absolutely go in my time capsule to explain the 1990s to the distant future. Anyway, Delta Green peeks into almost every dark corner of the twentieth century. But as you can probably guess by the title above, the heart of darkness that particularly interests me here is Vietnam. Carnage and madness and horror in the jungle. The Pentagon desparately trying to cover up the atrocities of their Tcho Tcho "allies." Tiger Transit smuggling the Liao Drug to America on CIA planes. Delta Green's own disastrous and fatal expedition into Cambodia in 1969. And nary a fairy to be seen.
Owlbabe
I haven't had the pleasure of playing in ajeffwik game yet either, but I love the Jeff Wiki and the one man Lexicon and all the fantastic strangeness that bubbles out of his games. I also love the bit-by-bit worldbuilding by hints and allusions and evocative names—like the "Day of I'm-Not-Really-Going-Anywhere-With-This" or the legend of "Needs-A-Ride-To-The-T." When Jeff is a player, his PCs generally seem to be out of step oddballs. But when Jeff's the GM, when the whole game world is constructed according to the same sideways non sequitur Jeff-logic—well, then you get a setting of surpassing beauty and oddity. If Jere is our fearsome occult-savvy Alan Moore, Jeff is our Borges, or at least our Borgstrom.
Yet Jeff often likes to attach that high-test imagination to bloated system-and-setting games like Planescape and Exalted and so on. Yes, yes, those games have fine qualities, I'm sure, but as Jeff said once in a comment at The 20x20 Room, "time I spend thinking about Charms and Soak and Peripheral Essence Pool is time I don't spend thinking about conflict and motivation and color." And any time Jeff doesn't spend thinking about conflict and motivation and color, well, that's just like time without sunshine.
So, I want Jeff to run a Trollbabe game, a multi-session traveling picaresque. It doesn't have to be about a party of Owlbears and Mimics (though it sure could be), nor does it have to have Trolls or Babes or any combination of the two in it. It just has to have some kind of outcast warriors making their way through a weird and wonderful Wikiverse. Because I am fairly convinced that if you just drop the Trollbabes out of Trollbabe, you are left with a really marvelous engine for wandering hero travelogues of the Yojimbo / Tom Jones / Huck Finn / Man with No Name / Samurai Jack variety. Jeff wants to spend his time on "conflict and motivation and color"? That, in three words, is all the GM has to do in running Trollbabe. It is a game that demands the GM create fantastic scenery and rich offbeat NPCs, but spend no time on dice pools or hex maps. What could be better?
Crisis on Infinite Tatros?
Well, that leaves me withhead58 and a dilemma. Because the game I've always wanted head58 to run is the Pariah Club game, the one that surfs the whole weird-Morrisonian-supers corner of the Amazing Tatroverse—Zimba the Man-Lion, the Ultra-Mennonite, the Scarlet Chimpernel... (Did I just dream that last one?) The Tatroverse is my name for Chris' immense and lovingly developed supers universe, and if you haven't had a chance to muck around in it, you're missing out. (head58 is our Jack Kirby.) But that's pretty much what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
weirdotron is supposed to be. So would it be cheating to just say that?
The only other little thing that comes to mind is this: I remember the night we played the weird Hollow Earth interlude in Unknown USA, Chris tossed out a few OOC interjections in an absolutely spot-on 1930s pulp radio announcer voice. Hmm. There's been rumbling about 1930s-style pulp for a while around here. Could these ideas be combined? Does the Tatroverse have a Golden Age? Does the world of the Weird-o-tron? Set a course for 1936, Doctor: Because when the Golden Age turns Weird, the Weird turn Pulpy!
...
So. Enough with the giving. How about the receiving?
robotnik Ruined Christmas. But wait! It's actually more like that animated special they always show in early January, The Year robotnik Eventually Saved Christmas. At least if you are jeregenest, mgrasso, jeffwik, or head58. And if your expectations were nice and low to begin with. These aren't as fully developed as the earlier ones: I'm just pointing in a direction I feel confident you each could go. Call it "Game Ideas I'd Like You To Come Up With," if you like. Hey, if I could do erudite eliptony like Jeremiah or fantasy mind-breakers like Jeff I'd run these games myself.Jerry Potter and the Reptoid's Throne
It should come as little surprise that the GM among us who stumped me all this time was
jeregenest. What idea does one give to the man who has everything? And what kind of game does one propose to a polymath as prickly and formidable as Jeremiah? Courage and inspiration came to me only after I remembered that the original design spec here was "Games I'd Like You To Run," not "Games You'd Like To Run." I remember Jere saying that he'd never run a game in a licensed setting—never had, and never would. I understand the sentiment, but it really could be fun to let him loose on one of the old genre chestnuts. Like, say, the most over-exposed children's fantasy of the last decade.Hear me out here. A
jeregenest Harry Potter game is really not as goofy as it sounds. The scholastic setting is perfect for Jere. One of the big plusses of any of his games is that no matter what weird and esoteric topic comes up in play, he's likely to know all about it, be highly opinionated on the subject, and have six hardcover books he'd be happy to lend you as background. The only corresponding danger is that (if you're not chrislehrich) you'll occasionally find yourself a little out of your depth. But make the PCs wet little Hogwarts frosh and the NPCs dour schoolmasters and, avada kedavra! you've just leveraged that dynamic into your game. Now, I think we'd have to set it in an era other than Harry Potter's bland modernity. Maybe an Edwardian Hogwarts. I know Jeremiah likes that era, and that would let us tap the original Edith Nesbit goodness that J.K. Rowling is just watering down anyway. And of course, I wouldn't expect our man Jeremiah to stick to anybody's canon. If half the fun of this game would be sitting at Jere's knee while he expounded on Basic Gematria and Decans 101, the other half would be peeling back the swotty skin of the Potterverse to reveal the howling gulfs of horror and thousand-year conspiracies he'd planted within. Did I mention Jere would be using Sorcerer?
Mekong Delta Green
I haven't had a chance to play in any of
mgrasso's games yet (as you know, he runs so very few), so I have to draw some inferences from gaming with him as a player and from hearing about his games (as you also know, he's very a private person. doesn't share much on his LJ. very hush hush). Some of the big plusses in an mgrasso game, I'm certain, include the lush historical settings, the richly detailed characters, and Mike's impressive thespian talents. The only minuses, as far as I can see? Well, how can I put this? There seem to be a lot of... faeries in his games. (Insert your own joke here. Yes, you know you want to. Might I suggest some variation on "...and I'm not just talking about the players," followed by a vaudeville rim-shot or a "thank you, I'll be here all week"?) Faeries or variations on the theme. Changelings, the fae, brownies, nixies, men in tights... I have a theory about why this is so. It goes like this: Mike likes girls. In particular, girls who like faeries. (Again, I'll just stand back and let you make any jokes that you think might need making.) And I am not criticizing him for this at all. On the contrary, it seems to be working for him like gangbusters. But man cannot live on fairy bread alone. And should there ever come a day when Mike wants to run something a little more macho? Well, this will be waiting for him.There aren't many RPG settings more testosterone-soaked than Delta Green. And Mike is probably the only other member of our pod who shares the intensity of my love for that setting. (Well, I know
bluegargantua digs Delta Green too, but he still hasn't Friended almost any of us, so nertz to him.) It's not just one of my favorite RPG settings, or even one of my favorite works of secret/alternate history in general. To me, the two Delta Green sourcebooks constitute a significant subcultural artifact of the 1990s. I'm not saying they rank with The Simpsons or Pulp Fiction, but they're on a par with Weezer's Blue Album or Might Magazine. They absolutely go in my time capsule to explain the 1990s to the distant future. Anyway, Delta Green peeks into almost every dark corner of the twentieth century. But as you can probably guess by the title above, the heart of darkness that particularly interests me here is Vietnam. Carnage and madness and horror in the jungle. The Pentagon desparately trying to cover up the atrocities of their Tcho Tcho "allies." Tiger Transit smuggling the Liao Drug to America on CIA planes. Delta Green's own disastrous and fatal expedition into Cambodia in 1969. And nary a fairy to be seen.Owlbabe
I haven't had the pleasure of playing in a
jeffwik game yet either, but I love the Jeff Wiki and the one man Lexicon and all the fantastic strangeness that bubbles out of his games. I also love the bit-by-bit worldbuilding by hints and allusions and evocative names—like the "Day of I'm-Not-Really-Going-Anywhere-With-This" or the legend of "Needs-A-Ride-To-The-T." When Jeff is a player, his PCs generally seem to be out of step oddballs. But when Jeff's the GM, when the whole game world is constructed according to the same sideways non sequitur Jeff-logic—well, then you get a setting of surpassing beauty and oddity. If Jere is our fearsome occult-savvy Alan Moore, Jeff is our Borges, or at least our Borgstrom. Yet Jeff often likes to attach that high-test imagination to bloated system-and-setting games like Planescape and Exalted and so on. Yes, yes, those games have fine qualities, I'm sure, but as Jeff said once in a comment at The 20x20 Room, "time I spend thinking about Charms and Soak and Peripheral Essence Pool is time I don't spend thinking about conflict and motivation and color." And any time Jeff doesn't spend thinking about conflict and motivation and color, well, that's just like time without sunshine.
So, I want Jeff to run a Trollbabe game, a multi-session traveling picaresque. It doesn't have to be about a party of Owlbears and Mimics (though it sure could be), nor does it have to have Trolls or Babes or any combination of the two in it. It just has to have some kind of outcast warriors making their way through a weird and wonderful Wikiverse. Because I am fairly convinced that if you just drop the Trollbabes out of Trollbabe, you are left with a really marvelous engine for wandering hero travelogues of the Yojimbo / Tom Jones / Huck Finn / Man with No Name / Samurai Jack variety. Jeff wants to spend his time on "conflict and motivation and color"? That, in three words, is all the GM has to do in running Trollbabe. It is a game that demands the GM create fantastic scenery and rich offbeat NPCs, but spend no time on dice pools or hex maps. What could be better?
Crisis on Infinite Tatros?
Well, that leaves me with
head58 and a dilemma. Because the game I've always wanted head58 to run is the Pariah Club game, the one that surfs the whole weird-Morrisonian-supers corner of the Amazing Tatroverse—Zimba the Man-Lion, the Ultra-Mennonite, the Scarlet Chimpernel... (Did I just dream that last one?) The Tatroverse is my name for Chris' immense and lovingly developed supers universe, and if you haven't had a chance to muck around in it, you're missing out. (head58 is our Jack Kirby.) But that's pretty much what weirdotron is supposed to be. So would it be cheating to just say that? The only other little thing that comes to mind is this: I remember the night we played the weird Hollow Earth interlude in Unknown USA, Chris tossed out a few OOC interjections in an absolutely spot-on 1930s pulp radio announcer voice. Hmm. There's been rumbling about 1930s-style pulp for a while around here. Could these ideas be combined? Does the Tatroverse have a Golden Age? Does the world of the Weird-o-tron? Set a course for 1936, Doctor: Because when the Golden Age turns Weird, the Weird turn Pulpy!
...
So. Enough with the giving. How about the receiving?
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Bloody fairy
Date: 2005-01-03 10:15 am (UTC)And yes, you're right. I oscillate wildly between the frou-frou and the macho. And I love Delta Green, especially Delta Green in 'Nam. Yeah, I was in the shit. Thanks, man. This is the best belated Christmas gift ever!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:03 pm (UTC)Which loosely translates as, it doesn't matter how bad ass they are, I can't take fairies seriously as long as they're wearing those curly-toed shoes.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 02:09 pm (UTC)But give me until tonight because I don't have any books here with me.And I'll have to buy d20Adventure and Abberant to do this with. And I'll need to whip up deck plans for an OranguThulist Airship and volcano headquarters. Yeah, I can do this.
Oh, and I thank you for the Kirby. That's mighty high priase.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 03:33 pm (UTC)And then its Aberrant, which is neutral.
So Horrible + Neutral = Horrible
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:56 pm (UTC)Don't hit me, but I'd use HERO for this.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 05:06 pm (UTC)We KNOW what you think, Smithers!
Date: 2005-01-03 05:10 pm (UTC)Wait...
Date: 2005-01-03 02:30 pm (UTC)If I friend you, do I get a game?
Tom
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:21 pm (UTC)Friended!
Tom
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 03:59 pm (UTC)Is there much comedy in the Potter books? I actually still haven't read any.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:07 pm (UTC)I could run a a school weird game (thought about it more than once), but I'm not sure it would be Harry Ptter. I'm not one for puns.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 05:20 pm (UTC)Do you feel like doing said Mekong Delta Green game on Wednesday night since DM is not happening?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-03 06:02 pm (UTC)I'll post to adhoc tonight when I get home.
Sorcerer????!????!!!!
Date: 2005-01-03 05:26 pm (UTC)So, what, the wands are the demons?
Re: Sorcerer????!????!!!!
Date: 2005-01-03 05:48 pm (UTC)Re: Sorcerer????!????!!!!
Date: 2005-01-03 05:51 pm (UTC)Oh, lordy! With one phrase you reduce me to ashes.
Date: 2005-01-10 03:06 pm (UTC)I can't believe I didn't respond to this. And now it's too late.
Anyway. I can and will rebutt one thing, the bit about the slogging through cumbersome systems such as D&D 3e and cumbersome settings such as Planescape -- I do that deliberately, for fear that otherwise I'd drown the players in a sea of ineffability.
ME: "The landfire dices with you over the matter of the seventeen harlots. Roll."
THEM: "I got a 4."
ME: "The landfire chortles and consumes in its alloverpowering hunger the seventeen harlots, your horse's bridle, and your sense of self-worth."
THEM: "...I dodge?"
ME: "Roll."
THEM: "I got a 2."
ME: "The landscape buckles under the stress of your majesty as your rip asunder this pale and ineffectual natural world in favor of a higher realm of desires and concepts."
THEM: "So was that successful, or...?"
ME: "The landfire is quenched by the onslaught of your dreams of evasion."
THEM: "...Can I loot the body and get my sense of self-worth back?"
ME: "Roll."
THEM: "I botch."
ME: "As you search the quenched fires you are set upon by a squadron of angels, terrible in their wrath."
THEM: "Huh?"
ME: "They arrest you for seventh-degree world-sundering and drag you in coral chains before the Court of Unhappy Torts and Blue-Green Misfortunes, where you are sentenced to eight years without bathing."
THEM: "..."
ME: "The magistrate, a corpulent Thursday afternoon, looks up from his meal of virginal asps to wax rhapsodic on your criminal tendencies and sin."
THEM: "...Can't I defend yourself?"
ME: "You have no sense of self-worth, so can't bring yourself to act in your own defense unless you spend a point of Willpower."
THEM: "I thought we were playing GURPS."
ME: "Oh, right. Make a Will roll and spend three points of fatigue, then."
And so on.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 03:19 pm (UTC)I'm sticking to my guns that you should run Trollbabe, but if you want to find some kind of middle ground between ineffability and crunch, check out Hero Quest. (See if you can get Jere to lend you my copy when he's up & about.)
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 06:50 pm (UTC)I think I'm going to have to get my hands on Hero Quest sometime soon.