Character Creation: ICONS Assembled Edition

Time to don the tights of justice! They're itchy and uncomfortable, but they get the job done. And OH, THE JOB OF IT! 

The Game: ICONS: Assembled Edition
The Publisher: Ad Infinitum Adventures
Degree of Familiarity: I ran a previous edition once, I think
Books Required: Just the one

ICONS is a four-color supers game. System is a pretty simple d6 + a thing vs the GM's d6 + a thing, with some permutation for degree of success, team effort, and suchlike. Character creation is largely random, and I'm all about it, so let's so a super-hero! 

First thing, we roll for Origins. An 11 gives me...Unearthly! Sweet! I'm an alien or a demon or something. I get to bump up two Attributes by 2. 

Speaking of which, time for Attributes! Rolling for each one in order, I get:

Prowess 8 (holy cats)
Coordination 5
Strength 7
Intellect 5
Awareness 6
Willpower 4

Human maximum is 6, y'all. Let's see, I don't think I want to swap anything (I could swap two if I chose). I will use my bonuses to bump Willpower to 6 and Coordination to 7. 

Powers! I get (roll) four powers, so now I roll for power type. Four rolls gives me:

Offensive
Defensive
Alteration
Alteration 

Cool, now I roll for each power specifically. For my Offensive power, I get Binding. For my Defensive, I get Life Support. For my first Alteration, I get Animal Mimicry and Alter Ego. I think I'll pop over the Powers chapter real quick and see if I wish to add limits or anything. I have an idea for the character, though. 

OK, I can drop powers to add extras; basically I sub out more appropriate powers. I'm going to drop Alter Ego and my make Binding power contagious; targets that are bound might end up binding others around them. Limits? Actually, first let's roll for the powers' levels. 

Animal Mimicry 4
Binding 4
Life Support 5

Yeah, I might want to limit some things, because then I can raise the levels. Let's see. 

OK, so what I'm thinking is that my guy is an alien conservationist. He goes from planet to planet picking out the most interesting lifeforms, takes their genetic data, and brings it back to his society's "menagerie planets" to clone the creatures so everyone can enjoy them! For whatever reason, though, Earth really captured his interest (plus there is so much biodiversity here!) so he's still hanging around. His Life Support power allows him to travel to any biome without injury or ill effect, and makes him functionally immune to disease. His binding is a little container on his hand that flicks out tiny super-gravity particles, increasing attraction between bodies, effectively immobilizing targets. His Animal Mimicry allows him to temporarily alter his own genetic code, taking on the aspects of animals he's already scanned (this does include humans, but his genetic code is already similar enough that it's not usually worth it). 

So, limits? I'll put Burnout on Binding; he needs to collect gravitons and graviolis, and that's time consuming and sometimes he forgets (in games terms, when I use it I roll a die and on a 1 or 2 it's not available for a while). Otherwise, I think my powers are fine.

Specialties! I get 2. I'll choose these; I want Athletics and Science. 

Look! My hero looks pretty much human; about average height, weight, and so forth (that's to blend in). His race is kind of ambiguous, and people tend to assume he's whatever ethnicity they are. His outfit is a mostly white spacesuit, very sleek and stretchy, with various pouches and pockets on the arms and waist. When he mimics animals, he tends to subtly change size and not-so-subtly gain stripes, spots, pigmentation, and so on; that's not something he usually has much control over. 

While we're at it, let's give him a name. To his people he is Gullatat Tawndy, but on Earth when he's fighting crime (which I think tends to be pretty much by accident), they call him The Encyclopod! 

(Yes, I stole that from Into the Wild Green Yonder. No ragerts.)

Qualities! These are basically Aspects, if we're honest. Let's start with an easy one: Species Collector for the Rupsig (that's his people). Also, I think my guy is Having Too Much Fun on Earth; sooner or later his race might come looking for it. He's Really Chatty - he's enthused and loves learning about this world, its cultures, its animals, its foods, and he hasn't entirely glommed on to the fact that not every Earthling even believes in aliens, let alone is ready to talk to one. 

And then we determine Determination (6 - number of powers, so 3 for me) and Stamina (Strength + Willpower, or 13).  

And that's it! Off to fight crime with the heart of the lion and the wings of a bat!

Movie #767: Star Wars: A New Hope

Star Wars, or Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as it's sometimes known, is the example that comes with the Hero's Journey Starter Pack and stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness. There is literally nothing new I can add to analysis or review of this movie, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

So in the far-flung future, or a long time ago, hardly matters, the evil Empire is chasing the plucky rebels through space. The Empire has developed a Death Star, a space station capable of blowing up a planet, but the rebels have procured the plans. A rebel leader, Princess Leia (Fisher) transmits the plans to would-be ally Obi-Wan Kenobi (Guinness) via two droids, C-3PO and R2-D2 (Daniels and Baker, respectively). Kenobi recruits young whiny farmer Luke Skywalker (Hamill) and subsequently space pirate Han Solo (Ford) to help, and together they defeat the evil lord Darth Vader (voiced by Jones, performed by Prowse), blow up the Death Star, and save the galaxy! 

Well, of course, this movie became a mega-hit and spawned one of the most culturally significant IPs ever, so the galaxy isn't really saved per se, but y'know. Luke and Han got medals.

Star Wars is weird. It's one of those movies that even if you haven't seen it, you know it, both by cultural osmosis and because Luke's journey is the classic hero's journey. A lot of older Gen-X folks speak of Star Wars with reverence. And of course they're still making TV shows, movies, and probably novelizations of the world (oh, and an RPG or two). 

But like...it's not really a good movie in a lot of ways. I try to look at older movies in the context in which they came out as well as the context of now; The Exorcist is a well-made horror movie by any standard but it's not gonna make people run puking for the door nowadays. But Star Wars, even by the standards of the time, is pretty weaksauce. The dialog is simplistic and boring (Sir Alec Guinness described it as "banal"), the story is linear and basic, and the characters are made of cardboard. Moving beyond the meta-stuff, the acting is mostly OK, with talented people doing their best. You can see the veteran actors (Guinness, Cushing) flowing with the garbage, Mark Hamill doing his earnest best, the sparks of talent in Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, but at the end of the day it's a kid's movie. 

But it came out at a time when franchise sci-fi wasn't really a thing and blew the doors off, and regardless of how good it is, it's simple and watchable. And if George Lucas had left well-enough alone rather than playing with his junk this junk for years, it would have been a lot better. Instead we have this silly-ass scene with CGI Jabba the Hutt that repeats dialog from the preceding scene, adds nothing the story, and only serves to highlight how cool the practical effects look by comparison. Oh, right, the practical effects are generally pretty cool and hold up well, which is why it's so perplexing that Lucas decided to go back in and add a bunch of shitty CGI effects to a movie made in 1977. 

Anyway, the series highlight is next!

My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Empire Strikes Back

Character Creation: Vampire: The Dark Ages

Ho boy, here we go.

The Game: Vampire: The Dark Ages
The Publisher: White Wolf (but like, back in the 90s)
Degree of Familiarity: It's complicated
Books Required: Just the one

OK, it's not really that complicated. I ran a lot of World of Darkness games when I was in college, starting with Wraith: The Oblivion but quickly branching out to basically all of them. I was hired to be the developer of the Dark Ages line in 2001, which was, in retrospect, a questionable decision, as I have no background or particular interest in medieval history (which is fine, because what they really wanted was D&D with fangs, as I was told on multiple occasions). Anyway, I found a couple of old WW books in my office a few months ago, and in keeping with my "do a character for every edition" policy, it's on the list!

Time was I knew World of Darkness books basically inside and out, but it's been a number of years since I've done anything with these games and even longer since I've looked at pre-2000 WoD books. Reading Vampire: The Dark Ages now, about the best thing I can for it is that the cover looks cool and the example of play, a comic with a script written in rhyme and the game mechanics translated on the facing page, is pretty dope. It's your standard 90s WW dealie, which means a bit of fiction or in-character prose, a chapter of setting, and then into splats interspersed with various system bits that reference concepts that haven't been introduced. As far as organization of information, game rulebooks have improved considerably. 

Also, this game fails the Chupp test so hard. I read through the clan write-ups, since that's usually the part of a WW book that inspires me, and it's just bland. I think what happened is that the folks who wrote it didn't know the juicy bits of the relevant history, and the result is that the book is rather blandly "medieval". That was 100% what happened when I was developing books for the line; I never had a good sense of the world because I didn't know the history and it's not like you can look up "what happened in Europe in 1230" and get an answer that makes sense (never mind that for Vampire what happened before that time is also very relevant). 

Well, anyway, I'm gonna make a vampire character and get this dot off this book, which will then mean I have two more WoD or WoD-adjacent games in my list (but one of them is likely to elicit strong feelings for me so I'll probably give that one another year or two). 

 

So first I need a concept. I...got nothing. I made a character for Dark Ages: Vampire some years back, but he was pretty bland (for reasons already discussed). 

OK, well, let's approach this another way - the official time in Vampire: The Dark Ages is mid-late 12th century, so let's do a bit of light historical research and see if anything interests me. (Incidentally, this book is shit for giving any specific context or flavor. Like, different nations are mentioned but I have no idea what a game set in, say, the Holy Roman Empire would look like as compared to one set in France. Guess that's what sourcebooks are for! Gotta save space for all the crossover information, so that the developers can shit on crossover in other books/the forums!)

All right, anyway, I've always been interested in the Iberian peninsula and Al-Andalus, and I've never made an Assamite character (and yes, there's a shitload of early WW racism bound up in that clan, but I'm not going to engage with it as best I can). The 1100s were a time of tumult in the area as Christians and Muslims struggled for territory, it looks like (based on my very cursory research). I've always found the idea of the hasty Embrace interested - a vampire that needs a particular quality right goddamn now and doesn't have the luxury of watching a particular person for years before making them undead. So let's say that my character was a cutpurse on the streets of Toledo. He was a young man (maybe 16 or so) when Alfonso VI took Toledo, and knew the city and its various populations pretty well. His sire, an Assamite of some importance but with limited knowledge of the area, was betrayed by a local supposed supporter and needed local eyes and ears, and guess what, my guy just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He has no idea if his mother or father (neither of whom he ever knew) really christened him, but he goes by Trin (short for "el trinchante", the big serving fork you use to grab hunks of meat).

Pretty good start. I'll put "cutpurse" as my Concept, I know my clan, how about Nature & Demeanor? I think I want Survivor as a Demeanor - he plays heavily into the "gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat" persona that he's cultivated, but the truth of the matter is a little darker. Trin's Nature is Rogue, and while that makes him usefully ruthless, it's gonna butt up against his clan's agenda at some point. Speaking of that, he's on the Road of Blood. 

Right, on to Step Two! Attributes! I think a lifetime on the street pushes him toward Physical being primary, but I'm torn between Social or Mental being secondary. I think I'll go with Social; Trin strikes me as a talker.

OK, so 7 points to divide up among Physical, 5 Social, 3 Mental. Let's just go ahead and jack Dexterity to 5, which eats 4 of my points. I'll put two into Stamina and the last one into Strength. 

Social! I want Trin to have a high Manipulation, so I'll put three there and leave Charisma and Appearance at 2. 

Mental! Even split, one dot in each one. Might raise Wits later.

And now, over to Abilities. This concept kinds demands Talents to be primary, but I dunno, there are a bunch of Knowledges I want, too. Let's use my tried-and-true method of putting a dot in everything I know I want and seeing where that takes us. 

Well, ignoring the early-edition stupidity (why is Acting a Talent? Why is Dodge its own thing?), I definitely see that Talents is where I have the highest concentration of Abilities, so yeah, Talents/Knowledges/Skills, I think.

I already have a dot in Acting, Alertness, Athletics, Brawl, Dodge (oy), Larceny, and Subterfuge. Six more points to throw around here. Well, I'll raise Larceny to 3 and Subterfuge, Acting, Alertness, and Athletics to 2. 

Now, over under Knowledges, I have a single dot in Hearth Wisdom, Investigation, Law, Linguistics, and Politics. Four more dots. I'm gonna put two into Linguistics and two into Politics. Trin has a good ear for language and the area he grew up was kind of the border of a few different territories, so he's learned a bunch of languages (he's not literate in anything, though). He's also got a good knack for social dynamics and he keeps his ear to the street on who's pissed at whom, from lowly gang leaders to nobility. It's all connected, after all. 

Skillz! I have a dot in Etiquette, Melee, Stealth, and Survival, and I only have one left, so I'll put that in Stealth. 

On to the fun stuff! I get four dots in Disciplines, which I have to split between Celerity, Obfuscate, and Quietus. Hmm. I think Trin's greatest aptitude is gonna be Obfuscate, so I'll put two dots there and one in the other two. Are my dice pools gonna suck? Oh, actually, none of those powers require rolls, sweet.

Backgrounds! I get five dots. Hmm. I know I want Mentor and I feel like Contacts makes sense. Let's put two in Mentor (well-respected elder but not on stable footing here), two in Contacts, and one in Generation for now.

Virtues! Seven dots to split between Conviction, Self-Control, and Courage. Hmm. I think two each and then the last one into Self-Control. That gives me a Road rating of 7 and a Willpower of 3 (boo). 

Freebies! I get 15, unless I wish to take Flaws, which I do. Let's take Infamous Sire (it's only a 1-pt Flaw, after all). I'll take Second-Class Citizen (because he's a street rat). And I'll take Overconfident, seems to fit. That gives me 4 more freebies, so I have 19 to throw around. 

I'll blow 7 on a dot of Auspex (I figure his sire would have taught him that post haste). I'll spend 3 to raise Willpower to 6. I'll spend 2 to buy a third dot of Stealth. That leaves me 7 more. I think I do want a third dot of Wits, so that's 5. Two left. Oh, let's put 'em into Generation, which makes me 9th generation. Nice.

So Trin got snatched up by an elder Assamite named Omar and Embraced. Omar projects this very "Sultan-from-Aladdin" vibe, but he's far from clueless. He's out of his depth because another Assamite stabbed him in the back (not literally) and cut him off from support in Al-Andalus, and Omar just needs a little help to find his feet, reestablish his power base, and then this other fucker is gonna get fed to Trin. 

Trin doesn't know that, of course, and he suspects that Omar is just using him for his street and linguistics knowledge, after which he'll get turned loose or set on fire. Trin's roguish nature might just screw him long-term, here. But we'll never know 'cause I ain't never gonna play this little scamp (which is a shame, I kinda like him). 

Movie #765: Star Trek

Star Trek is a reboot of the beloved sci-fi franchise directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Leonard Nimoy, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood, and Eric Bana. 

A massive Romulan ship captained by a mad...um, miner called Nero (Bana) appears and blows the bejeesus out of a Starfleet ship. One George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth in a cameo) takes command as it blows up and holds the line long enough for survivors, including his wife and newly-born son, to escape. Years later, said son, Jim (Pine) is a drunk douchebag living in Iowa and gets into a fight with a bunch of Starfleet cadets. A captain, Pike (Greenwood), finds him and contextualizes his father's death a bit and convinces him to enlist.

Flash forward a few years. Kirk has befriended a doctor named McCoy (Urban), a xenolinguistics expert named Uhura (Saldaña), and run afoul of a half-Vulcan scientist and the other main POV character, Spock (Quinto). Through a series of wacky events, Kirk and his pals wind up on the newly minted flagship of Starfleet, the Enterprise, with enough information to actually be useful in battling the Romulan ship that's kicking Starfleet's ass. Though more wacky events, Kirk gets booted off of said ship and meets up not only with banished and very Scottish engineer Montgomery Scott (Pegg), but also Spock-from-the-future whaaaaat (Nimoy). Time travel shenanigans abound! Well, they don't really abound, they just serve as a justification for why characters are familiar but their lives played out slightly differently. Anyway Nero destroys planet Vulcan but gets blowed up in the end, Kirk and Spock make friends, and Kirk gets assigned as captain of the Enterprise and starts boldly goin'. 

So...I'm not going to say this movie is perfect. For one thing, it's kind of become a running joke that Abrams lens-flared it to bejeesus and holy shit is that true. Like, at the end when Kirk takes the bridge of the Enterprise as captain I kept wanted him to say "could we turn down the fucking lights a little?" And I'm sure if I were a Trekkie I'd be able to find all manner of things to get mad about.

Thing is, though, I'm not a Trekkie, and so I feel about this movie about the same way I feel about Galaxy Quest. It's a way to make this huge, sprawling, dense property accessible to those of us who only know about it through cultural osmosis. Likewise, I'm sure I miss a large number of Easter eggs and fan-service lines; the ones I caught I mostly understood because of the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before." 

But with that said, there's a lot I like about this movie. I love the cast. They're all capable and they all manage to avoid doing impressions of the original cast, so far as I could tell. And I'm sorry, but Chris Pine is a stronger actor than William Shatner ever was, so the movie is like 30% less ham by volume. The interplay between characters is the strongest thing about the movie; my favorite scene is where everyone's together trying to solve the problem (followed closely by literally any scene where Simon Pegg has a line, because I love his Scottish). 

The action scenes are fine. Everything's CGI, so like, it looks cool, but eh. I've been watching space battles my whole life, and part of the charm of Star Trek is janky effects, so making it so slick feels a little out of place (actually, the engine room of the Enterprise and Nero's ship are my favorite sets, precisely because they feel a little more real). 

I also enjoy the justification for the reboot - Spock's venture into the past changed everything, but not in a way he can fix. Only thing to do is let things play out, which handily also means the crew can have new adventures without constantly recycling moments from the first go-round...oh, I'm not saying they did that, just that they could have. (KHAAAAAAAN!)

Also RIP Anton Yelchin. 

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Star Wars: A New Hope

Character Creation: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl

Voof voof, comrade.

The Game: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl
The Publisher: 9th Level Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I love games like this. It's such a specific concept, it probably doesn't have a great deal of replay value, but man, "you play the dogs of Chernobyl fighting Lovecraftian horrors," what a hell of a pitch. And let's be real, it's $15 for the book. You'd spend that on a movie ticket alone. 

So anyway, that's really the pitch for the game. Characters are a pack of doggos (very good doggos), who live in and around the town of Pripyat. There are monsters in the woods that leaked out through a tear in reality, and the humans don't really have much of a clue. Humans mostly try to shoot you, and some doggos actually remember the time before all this when humans took care of doggos, but some were born in the aftermath. It's got the potential to be a truly tragic game, though you could make it a straight horror game without much trouble. 

First thing we'd do, normally, is choose a pack. Pack basically describes the dynamic of the PC group, and it does matter mechanically because you can roll your pack die if more than one dog is helping out, but since it's just me I shall skip it. 

Next we pick role: Hunter, Courser, Elder, or Guard. I dunno. I don't really have a concept, so I suppose I shall go to my music library and randomly pick a song. Just a moment.

Oof. OK, then. This is a song about living in the moment and recognizing that nothing will ever be the same as it is now. Let's just lean into the damn tragedy, here. My doggo is an Elder (which, annoyingly, doesn't at all indicate how old he is; there's a different choice for that, and I feel like the writers knew it was a bad choice of words because it's called "Expert" in one place in the book). 

My character's name is Mitya. Mitya was already old when the doom came to Pripyat, and had pretty much resigned himself to snoozing most of the rest of his life. And then he wound up living through horrors he never expected as his humans were forced to flee and the young human he'd watched grow from a baby sobbed as they forced him into a truck. Mitya has thought many times about lying down to die, but he just doesn't have it in him to give up until his pack is out of danger...so, pretty much never. 

I picture Mitya as a bloodhound, which I don't think are common in Ukraine, but whatever. Some kind of hound. Anyway, the next choice is Generation, and Mitya is Wyse (meaning he was born before the disaster and lived with humans). He gets the Remembers edge from that.

Next up, Breed. I want Mitya to be big, so I think I'll pick Borzoi. That means I get to pick an Edge from Agile, Fast, Gentle, Quiet, or Smart. Hmm. Not Agile or Fast, not at his age. I like Gentle, actually.

Calling! This is the place Mitya has in the pack. Is that not the same thing as Role? WHO KNOWS. (There are some kind of ill-defined things in this game.) I think Mitya is either a Guide or a Shadow, and I think Shadow is interesting for a dog so big. I'll take Hiding as his Edge.

And that's really it. Mitya is a great big Borzoi, mostly white with black patches. He's really good at lying still and letting everyone forget he's there, and he's really good at staying quiet for longer than you'd think. Mitya remembers the days before all the fire and smoke, and he's given up trying to teach the pups about it. He encourages them now to find the joy they can in the days they have, because sure as summer follows spring they'll end, something will change, and all they'll have is what they can remember. 

And on that cheery note, we're done!

Character Creation: Gods of the Fall

aaaaaaaah splat

The Game: Gods of the Fall
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, but I know Cypher OK
Books Required: Gods of the Fall and the Cypher System Rulebook

For as much as I love games where you play as the God of [Whatever], there are a bunch of them that kinda miss the mark. Like, Scion always tried to be something like the game I wanted - when it was first conceptualized it was meant to lean closer to American Gods - but it got bogged down by being an early-aughts White Wolf product and the original developer getting kicked to the curb. (Though maybe the second edition did better, I haven't read through all of it.) In Nomine hits some of the right notes, too, but it falls short by keeping the really good stuff (like being Word-bound) out of PCs' reach.

But Gods of the Fall is literally a game where the PCs slowly uncover their own divinity, and I gotta say I'm feelin' it. The basic premise is that 42 years ago, the city of the gods literally crashed to Earth, all the gods died, and over the new few decades the world has kinda fallen to shit. Slavery (which the gods had outlawed) runs rampant, powerful sorcerers set themselves up as feudal kings, and in the biggest city you can literally purchase a license to do just about anything, including commit murder.

The PCs, in this setting, are new gods, but at tier 1 they don't necessarily know it yet. The game asks the GM to consider whether starting characters know their dominion (that is, what they're the god of) - either approach is fine, but it changes the dynamic somewhat. 

I like the setting. There's a lot going on, but it's a setting that invites PC fuckery (much like Shadow of the Demon Lord, actually). And I actually have something of a concept, so let's gooooo!

Characters in Cypher System consists of a type, a descriptor, and a focus (so a character is an adjective noun who verbs). Gods of the Fall adds a dominion, so it's adjective noun who verbs, god of dominion. I know I want my dominion to be Silence, and I know I want my focus to be Speaks Curses (it's in the Gods of the Fall book); I like the idea of the God of Silence having to remain silent because his words are too devastating. Kind of a Black Bolt situation. But I have not chosen type and descriptor yet, so let's do that. Also why don't have I have a PDF of Gods of the Fall? Weird. Maybe I bought it secondhand. 

Anyway, the four types are slightly refitted in Gods of the Fall, so I can pick from destroyer, shaper, champion, or savior. I don't think champion works, but maybe destroyer? Nah, too action oriented. Shaper is very magicky and not really what I want...I think savior actually works, in a weird backhanded way. 

OK, so as a savior I get Might 8, Speed 9 and Intellect 11, and then six more points to split up. I think I'll bump Intellect to 12, Might to 10, and Speed to 12. I get Enthrall, which is the one where I speak and keep another being's attention, which is very much in line with what I'm going for. Then I get three more abilities from the savior list. I definitely want Mental Link, which allows me telepathic communication. I want Erase Memories, that seems in-theme. For the last one...how about Practiced with Light & Medium Weapons.

And then I get the same Edge/Effort spread as speaker, which means I get Effort 1 and Might Edge 1. 

Next I need a descriptor, and I gotta say I'm really liking Humble. That gives me 4 extra points in my stat pools; I'll put all four into Intellect. I'm trained in Intellect defense, which is nice. But then I'm also soft-spoken, meaning whenever I apply Effort I have to spend an extra Intellect point, which is rough.

And then my focus is Speaks Curses. The tier-1 ability is a cursed tattoo that hurts anyone who touches me, which I'd normally be really cool with but it's not really in theme here. Fortunately, I can swap it out for Curse of Baleful Blistering; I can curse someone and they get gross pustules all over them.

And that's all the mechanical stuff, but I need to think about background for this guy. And since I don't have a strong idea, I shall roll on the savior table and see if I like what happens. "As a child of a diplomat you enjoyed the finer things, including an enviable education." Nah, doesn't fit. "You dream of a powerful creature in the shape of a tiger almost every night. Though it is sometimes frightening, you eventually decided it was your spirit guide leading you to a great adventure." That's better. One of the Big Bads of the setting is a sorcerer who has a bunch of pet (and animated stone) tigers, so that'd be fun to tie in. 

So let's say that my guy is from the city of Corso, the same city that the aforementioned sorcerer lives in (her name is Nulumriel). He was an average citizen who witnessed Nulumriel and her tigers out and about one day, for a reason that he's never known. But one of the stone tigers turned and looked right at him, and every night since he's dreamed of that tiger, and known that what the tiger desires above all is stillness, to return to the endless vigil of being a statue. Its movement and roar are a curse. 

Simplicity Averint (for 'tis his name) was raised in an orphanage that acts as a feeder institution for the Slave Districts - children live there until someone adopts them (never), they find a way to buy their way out (almost never), they escape (sometimes), or they're sold as slaves (usually). Simplicity escaped when he was 13 and walked out into the city. He's survived on his own, doing odd jobs for people who can't afford to own slaves (cleaning, mostly). When he speaks, people wince, even if he's not cursing them. Better just to keep quiet. 

Simplicity is barely 18, skinny (malnourished, really). Everything he owns, he carries, and most of what he owns is stolen, except the black amulet he wears. He bought that from a junk peddler for two pennies, and staring at it makes him think of the stone tiger. 

And that'll do it!

NOVA: Dust Cicadas

Today we played a one-shot of NOVA. It's pretty dope! Check it.

Many years ago, the sun exploded. Shards of the sun crashed into the Earth, a sliver of the moon remains visible in the sky, and people have built settlements around the shards. 

Our story takes place in Radia. Radia is a commune kind of arrangement - a central hub with a larger shard where the farming happens. Multiple other smaller settlements surround it: The Northern Watch (to the north, doy) builds walls and focuses on perimeter defense. The Dangles, off to the south, consists of a couple of weather stations that handle communications in Radia. The West Hide (again, not surprisingly off to the west) houses multiple scientists and botanists working to study the ashy marshes and find new foodstuffs. Homerun, slightly southeast of the central hub, is the administration hub and population center, and acts as a feeder to the other areas. Finally, the Armory, to the east, is where Sparks (the big mechsuits that people use to venture out into the Dusk for various reasons) are constructed and programmed. 

Today, five people are being taken to the Armory to be "fitted" for Sparks. Edward B. Rock is the son of farmers in West Hide, but his family has been here for generations and he already has a Spark - it belonged to his great-grandfather, whose dog tags he wears around his neck.

Marie Strider is a teen from the Dangles. Something of a technical savant, she works as a kind of mobile IT person. She's happy enough to fix comm tech, but she really wants to get out of Radia and wander.

Sammy Chestnut is a scientist from West Hide. He figures that by piloting a Spark, he can get further out into the Dusk and interact with nature.

Lily Cantor is from Homerun and wants with all her heart not to be a farmer. She's done multiple jobs in multiple spokes, and figures that if she's a Spark pilot, that'll keep her out of the fields.

Aiden Crane is another farmboy, but from Nitrofarm. He ran away from home at one point and Ed's family took him in for a time, and he's been known to drink with Marie. He had a crush on Ed's sister Alice...but Alice was killed by Hellions six months ago, and Aiden wants to pilot a Spark to find them and take revenge.

The five of them ride through a bit of the Dusk to the Armory, feeling the chill nip at them before the smaller sunshard warms them again. Sarge, one of the officers from the Northern Watch, brings them into a bunker where multiple Sparks sit against the wall. He describes each of them and demonstrates their capabilities with a table - the Pyre, the Scorch, and so forth. Ed's unit, a Pox, is already here.

The new pilots poke at the machines, before eventually picking their Sparks. Marie chooses the Voyager, the most mobile of the Sparks. Aiden takes the Pyre, while Lily picks the Scorch. Sammy chooses the heavily armored Warden armor. Sarge teaches them how to program their Spark to fit their style and then leads them out into a corral. 

"Best way to learn is by doing!" he says. "But we're not going to send you into active combat; that's a waste of Sparks. And you. So you get hardlight enemies!" He explains that the tech draws on the nearby sunshard to create hardlight illusions, solid enough to pack a punch (and give a slight electric shock) but not able to seriously injure anyone. He tells them that they need to understand their Sparks' capabilities, but also each other's. With that, he actives the enemies - a horde of giant tarantula-like creatures!

Ed releases a stream of green gas and infects one of the spiders, while Marie activates her Spark's tech and "marks" several of them (and they light up on the other Sparks' HUDs). Aiden surges forward with his Pyre, summoning up a sword of light and fire, and slashing at the spiders, while Sammy picks one up, squeezes it, and hurls it. Lily sucks up the energy left behind when they die and parcels it out as fuel to the other Sparks. The spiders retaliate - several of them surrounded Aiden and bite at him, delivering multiple little zaps.

The Sparks make short work of the spiders. Sarge tells them that they did well, but they need to think about their positioning. He notes that Marie barely moved, and tells her that in a real battle she'll need to be more mobile - the Voyager isn't a tank like the Warden. He also notes that if the spiders had been real enemies, they might have done real damage to Aiden's Pyre. But he feels that they're ready for a mission - he sends them out to relax, but report back here tomorrow!

The pilots talk amongst themselves and come up with callsigns - Ed is called Bugspray. Aiden is Bey (as in "bey blade"). Sammy is Wally. Lily is Juice, and Marie is Beacon. They talk about tactics and Lily explains a picket fence (making best use of Wally's huge shield), and they all get some sleep.

The next day, Sarge briefs them. There's a big structure out to the southwest, and it's had a lot of Hellion activity lately. Hellions are usually mobile, so if they're staying in one place there's a reason for it. Go out there, do some recon, assess any threat, and at your discretion, burn it. The pilots suit up and head out into the wastes.

They reach the structure, an immense pre-cataclysm factory complex. The walls are gutted in places and the main gates are wide open, but it's still pretty fortified. Beacon gets close and surveys the area, keeping out of sight, and notes between 15 and 20 Hellions in the place. Most are soldiers, armed with clubs or machetes, but a few have firearms and a couple of have flamethrowers. One has a much sleeker weapon and a jetpack that she uses to zoom around the area; she's clearly a leader.

Beacon isn't quite sure what they're doing here, but she also gets some weird readings from the ground. She streams this info back to the others, and Lily does some quick analysis and determines that these are life-signs. There are living things buried here. The Sparks sneak up (with Beacon providing guidance) and hide in an outbuilding, and see that one of the Hellions is taking soil samples. Beacon taps into their comms to keep tabs.

Before doing anything, the Sparks decide they'd like to know what those buried things are. Doing a little scanning, they find a few that are outside the factory and out of eyesight. Wally smashes his immense fists into the dirt and pulls up a huge cicada-like creature, still torpid and sluggish, but obviously dangerous. If these things are buried all around, what are the Hellions doing with them? Bugspray crushes its head, not wanting to let it wake up), and Beacon gets a burst of chatter - "got a big pheromone spike! Tracking...".

They head back to the outbuilding and see that the scientist-Hellion is now using a device to track the pheromones - and she's pointing at them. The jetpack-wearing leader notes the outbuilding, and says "put a couple of incendiaries in there."

The Hellions fire a couple of grenades and the Sparks scatter out. The building blows up behind them. Bugspray steps forward, letting his poison gas leak a bit, and a couple of the Hellions fall back, recognizing a Pox when they see one. But the leader yells, "TAKE 'EM DOWN!" The battle is joined!

Wally charges forward and slams down his shield. Bey runs up the wall to a catwalk and runs a Hellion through, and then jumps for cover. Beacon marks a few and Bugspray infects some, immobilizing them, but sniper fire drops him. The Hellion leader leaps forward and lays down a line of fire, scrambling the Spark's HUDs for a second, and one of the firebugs napalms them. 

Juice helps Bugspray to his feet, and Bey hurls his light-spear at one of the snipers. Wally charges in and stuns one of the Hellions while Beacon marks more and sends out a hard-light decoy. Juice follows up by jumping amidst them and igniting herself, burning several of them to cinders. Beacon sends out explosives and the leader falls, and from there it's not difficult to kill the rest...except the scientist, still alive, fingers her device and the life-readings from the buried bugs go nuts.

Bey leaps off the wall and puts his blade to the scientist's throat, telling her to stand down. She drops the device, but tells Bey it's too late, the bugs are already waking up. Wally pulls one out of the ground and crushes it, while Bugspray releases a concentrated dose of poison and kills two more. The scientist looks past Bey and sees Bugspray...and pulls off her mask, revealing herself to be Alice, his supposedly dead sister! "Ed! It's me!"

Just then the cicadas emerge. Bey (whom Alice hasn't recognized - she only recognized Bugspray because of the armor) scoops her up and runs out of the factory. "Wait, who are you?" she asks. "A friend." Wally leaps forward and smacks a bug with his shield, and Beacon runs up to try and find the device that Alice dropped. The bug that Wally hit spews some chemical cloud at them. More bugs swarm Juice and start chewing on her armor. The armor's protocols take over and she releases waves of energy that liquefy a couple of the bugs and rejuvenate the other Sparks. 

Bugspray helps her up, and they get back to the battle. Beacon marks bugs and launches miniature explosives at them, and Bey slashes right through one. Wally smashes the last two together, and the Sparks are victorious! But what about Alice?

She reveals that the Hellions saved her six months ago (and shows the burn scars she was left with), but wouldn't let her leave. They wanted her to use her knowledge of cicada life cycles and biology to control them and send them to swarm Radia; the Hellions were going to pick the remains after the bugs ate everyone. The tech to awaken them is based on the Pox armor, in fact. 

The Sparks take Alice back to Radia for debriefing, and then on to celebration. Their first mission is a success! But who knows how many more of these bugs are out there in the Dusk? 

Movie #764: Stand By Me

Stand By Me is a mid-80s drama directed by Rob Reiner and  starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, and Richard Dreyfuss. 

The movie is a memoir of Stephen King Gordy Lachance (Wheaton, Dreyfuss in the "present") who is now (where "now" is 1985) a father and a successful writer, looking back on his youth in Castle Rock Maine Oregon. When he was 12, he and three friends - his best friend Chris (Phoenix), troubled military aficionado Teddy (Feldman), and goofball Vern (O'Connell) - hiked 30 miles to find the corpse of a boy that had been killed by a train and lost in the woods.

Along the way, they have various misadventures - they get chased by a junkyard dog who turns out to be a big ol' creampuff, they go swimming in a leech-filled swamp, they have important debates about what type of creature Goofy is (he's clearly a dog, guys, and the argument that he wears pants and drives a car doesn't hold much water when there's a duck and a mouse right there that do the same thing). They finally do find the body, but decide that it's not right to get glory at the expense of exploiting the tragedy (oh, and in the process they nearly get stabbed by young hot Kiefer Sutherland). 

Of course, that's the framing of the story. The story is really about Gordy and how he comes to terms with the death of his older brother (John Cusack) and the apathy and borderline resentment from his parents (Marshall Bell and Francis Lee McCain). And it's a kind of nostalgic look back at young boys and their pre-teen friendships. The story is the very essence of "bittersweet," as we know from the first scene that Chris is murdered as an adult and this is adult Gordy looking back on his friend and the experiences they shared.

I have weird feels about this movie. I really like it, it's quotable and very much part of my young moviegoing experience, but I don't connect to it in the same way others do because I just didn't have close friends in middle schools. I was weird and awkward and shy and starting to become depressed, and the kids around me were mostly rich and kinda up themselves (there were exceptions, but there's having friends and then there's having friends you would go see a body with, and I didn't have that). So while I can relate to Gordy in a lot of ways, I don't look back on that time in my life with any kind of camaraderie-based fondness. 

But aside from all that: It's a really well-made movie. Reiner cast the four leads by find kids that had personality types that matched their characters and then teaching them to act, and the result is that you get the characters actually interacting with nice long takes rather than multiple cuts as a director gives the child actors line readings. The adults in the movie mostly back off and play supporting roles, with the result that we get to see them from the kids' perspectives. The fates of the four boys has some eerie prescience, too, sorry to say (RIP River Phoneix). 

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Star Trek

Character Creation: The Agency

Pip-pip, etc.

The Game: The Agency
The Publisher: Realms
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

The Agency has the PCs working for the titular organization in a stylized 1960s London (but the game expects globe-trotting, taking inspiration from Bond and the like). Except not only do we deal with spies and terrorists, we've got werewolves and zombies and so forth. Dig it!

I mean, it's nothing I haven't seen before - secret organization of agents fighting the supernatural for King and Country - but it's smoothly written and simple. Can't argue with that. Also the game has a sense of humor that doesn't beat you in the face, and I appreciate that. Making a character for this game shouldn't take long, so let's do that! 

First we need a concept. The book says that the Agency tends to recruit witnesses, so it's not like my agent needs to be a military or, like, espionage-y in background. Let's say my character is street vendor. Sells apples (and raspberries), took over the stand from his Dad, married but she ran off with a bloke from the US, take it or leave it, you know? The middle way, that's what I think. Sid Arthur (for 'tis his name) was, if not happy, then more contemplative than anything, and then one morning a group of agents chased a vampire right past his stand. The vampire was burning the early dawn light, and Sid, who knew evil when he saw it, tripped the bastard. The agents ran up and staked it, and then had a very difficult conversation on their hands.

Sid was happy to join up, though. He's not as suave or cultured as some of these toffs, but he's friendly and he's a good guy to have if your mission keeps you in London. Dubai, maybe not so much, but you know, he's learning.

Skills! I get one at 5 and one at 4, everything else is 3. Sure. I'll put my 5 in Persuade and my 4 in Track, how about.

Bonuses and Flaws! I have to take one of each, I can take two of each. Let's look through 'em and see what's appropriate for ol' Sid. OK, I found two of each I like. I want Keep 'em Talking (Sid can get anyone chatting), and I think it'd be cool if Sid had Mysticism. He's never been trained in such things, he just has an instinctive sense about magical shit. He's not going to be telling you about Romanian history anytime soon, but he can pick a yew wood stake out of a quiver without looking because that's what needs to go in that vampire's heart. Weird.

For Flaws, I want Reckless (it's not that Sid is really danger-prone or reckless per se, he just has this "let go, let God" kind of attitude) and Soft-Hearted (he really is a nice guy).

Finally, I get one Karma, three status boxes, and a Motif. A Motif is just a thing that recurs in our hypothetical TV series. For Sid, I think it's either got to be related to his weird knowledge of mystical shit, or his entirely too easy-going nature, and because I find the former more interesting I'll do that. His Motif is how did you know that?

And that's it, y'all. Sid is in his 30s, medium build, slightly balding, nice eyes, kind smile. He's not as glamorous as a lot of his co-workers, but that's fine, somebody's gotta drive the car and handle the bags, right?

Board Game: Cryptid

Fry! It's me, Bigface! Come out and groom my mangy fur!

The Game: Cryptid
The Publisher: Osprey Games
Time: 10 minutes or so
Players: Me, Michelle, Amanda

Game Play: Cryptid is a deductive game. The premise is that the players are all cryptozoologists hunting, well, a cryptid. We each know one clue about where it's hanging out, with respect to features on the map. Said features include terrain types (your standard swamp, mountain, desert, cotton candy, underwear, etc.), man-made features (abandoned shacks and standing stones) and animal hunting grounds (bears and cougars). So your clue might be "within three tiles of a cougar hunting ground."

You can't see it well in this picture but cougar hunting grounds are outlined in red

Everyone gets a clue booklet, from which you check one clue, based on a random card (which also sets the configuration of the tiles and the man-made stuff). From there on out, you can either search a tile or question a player. Searching a tile requires you to reveal a tile where, based on your clue, the creature might reside. If another player's clue disproves that, they put a cube on it. If not, they put a disc on it. If you search a tile and everyone places a disc, you found it! Tranquilize it, cut off its feet, and dump it back in the wild. It'll do fine.

"How many Futurama references you gonna make, here, Matt?"

 If you question, you ask another player about a tile. If the tile could be the cryptid's home based on their clue, they place a disc, otherwise they place a cube and so do you (but on a different tile). Slowly, you start to figure out the patterns, and eventually you can search tiles more confidently. 

Until the board looks like this

Opinions: A little anecdote. My mother taught Early Childhood Education for many years, and one thing that drove her kuh-razy was when students who do shit like say they were going to do a unit on bears, but then that unit was a bunch of math worksheets with bears in the margins. She had a lot to say about content knowledge and how elementary education curricula kinda sucked, but the long and short of it is that the bears were nothing but set dressing. 

So what we've got here is a deduction game a la Battleship that has cryptid set dressing. There's nothing about the game other than the title and the sea monster on the cover that has anything to do with cryptids. 

Now, the game is fine. I enjoyed playing it, but I'm good at games like this. But I don't know that it's cool enough to be worth skipping over some other games that we like better. Also we ran out of cubes a couple of times. 

Keep? Eh, probably not. Gotta make room in the game closet.

Character Creation: Gods of Metal: Ragnarock

SQUIBBLEY-FLABBITY-DOO! It's a sleek Lamborghini! Thanks, Night Ranger. 

The Game: Gods of Metal: Ragnarock
The Publisher: Hunters Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: None, I've read it
Books Required: Just the one

So I'll be honest, I've never really liked heavy metal as a music form. I mean there are bands and songs that I kinda dig, but honestly it was always on the...I dunno, loud side for me? But it sort of depends how you define it, I suppose.

The aesthetic, though, I can very much get into. The loud (in a visual sense), busy, bombastic, maybe dark and maybe not style of metal album covers I can totally appreciate, and the attitude of Gods of Metal: Ragnarock is something I very much enjoy. Also, the game is a labor of love, and it completely shows. It's peppered with "other RPGs might do this," but it's not in the patronizing "and we're real games" or "but they're not art" way of the OSR or the most pretentious of the indie crowd, respectively, it's more a caricature of both, and it works because it takes the piss out of itself. 

Also, the mechanics reflect the tone, and that's something a lot of games don't bother with. If you and a Bandmate act on the same initiative (sorry, "activation") you can Harmonize, which allows you to share successes and failures during that action. It's actually pretty intuitive.

Now, the book is a little rough at points. It needed another editor pass, and there are a few places where what's being discussed just kind of...stops. But with that said, I'm much more interested in playing this somewhat janky but absolutely fun-looking game than I am, say, Marks, which is much more polished but doesn't feel like it's about anything. 

There's a whole scenario for chargen, which I would use if I were acting as GM (sorry, "Metal Maestro") but since it's just me I'll just use the chargen section proper. 

So the basic setup here is that in Mundania, the Executors grind you down and force you into boring, soul-crushing tasks to build up Tedium and Suffering. But in the heart of every person thrums the Chord of Creation, and sometimes people embrace that music and find themselves in Ragnarock, the realm of Metal, as demigod-like Avatars! (guitar riff) 

An aside: one of the things I really love about this game is that it calls out the fact that Avatars aren't like other Denizens of Ragnarock. They don't really need to worry about eat, sleep, and so forth, they're here to grow their legend and rock the proverbial house, slay monsters and kick ass! Also when you take gear from slain foes, you can absorb it into your own gear and make it better. I dunno, I just enjoy when these obviously game-y bits are actually folded into the setting and system. Moving on.

So first I must decide who I am in Mundania. It's not like I'll never go back; if you "die" in Ragnarock you get booted back into your boring-ass life, but if it happens too many times the Executors will, um, un-person you. (Side note: Does anyone else get a real 1984 newspeak vibe from the whole "saying 'unalive' instead of 'kill'" thing that people do on Tiktok and such?)

What's the most soul-crushing job I've ever had? That's easy. I was a telemarketer for a cemetery for about a month in the 90s. I had to call people up and offer them a free burial plot, and try to get them to agree to someone coming out to their house to sell them on a mausoleum ("smile and dial and get us a lead!"). I hated that job. I only last a month because a) I sucked at it and b) I got mono and had to quit. So let's say my Mundanian has a similar job - he has to call people up and give them Mandatory Surveys of Productivity. Nothing kills your productivity like having to stop and take a survey, but you dodge the call at your peril. But Scott, for t'is his name, dreams of using his calls to prank people, to yell at them in a melodic kind of way, to urge them to rise up, or maybe just invite them to dinner, I don't know. 

So then Scott gets pulled out of his job and into the Umbilical Descent to Ragnarock. I think one day he just snapped while he was on the phone with someone - she was answering the questions in that bored "OK let's finish this up" tone and he was asking them in that pseudo-chipper "the bosses are probably listening" tone, and finally he said "HEY. One last question: This whole thing is UTTER FUCKING BULLSHIT. Agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree?" And she paused as the universe teetered and finally said. "Strongly. Fucking. Agree." (bass chords begin, walls fall away, drums kick in...)

OK, next we pick Tone, the god of Metal that Scott-in-Ragnarock follows. Oh, now this is fun. In the printed book, the gods sections in this part of the book liken each one to a subgenre of metal, but in the PDF it's been updated to include example bands. That's very helpful.

Hmm. I think Scott is a follower of Fenrawr. I like the tenacity and the unshaking belief that we can beat this wall down with enough raw effort. I get a dot of Brawn (or "Brawl" if we're looking at the sheet), and a dot of Wildz (or "Wyldz" if we're looking at the sheet - told ya, needed an editing pass). I get a Power Move, too, but I'm not gonna print the second page so we'll just take that as read. 

Skillz! All 12 Skills get a free dot (which could have been filled in on the sheet, but never mind), and then I get 13 more. I can't go over 4 at this point (rather, 4 + Notoriety, which is 0 for a starting Avatar). I already have a free second dot in Brawl/n and Wy/ildz, so at the end of the day I'll wind up with 27 dots in Skills.

Well, Cram allows general knowledgey things, and at the risk of playing to type too much I think it might be something Scott is good at (he does talk to people a lot, you pick things up). So I'll put a point there for now. Feelings is very much appropriate to him, so I'll put two dots there and jack it to three. Legendsmithing is also probably in Scott's wheelhouse, so I'll pump that to 4. Pharmacopia sounds useful, I'll put a dot there. Oh, shit yeah, Stunts. I'll put two in there. Streetz (streetwise, basically) also seems like it'd be helpful. I'll put one in there. That's 24 dots, I have 3 left. I'll bump Brawl and Cram to 3, Wildz to 2, and Stunts to 4.

Position! This is basically the character class. Scott strikes me as somewhere between a straight-up warrior and a bard, pumping everyone else up (though everyone can do that to a degree in this game). Ooh, I think Blüdgard makes the most sense. Very much keen on helping out Bandmates. I can dig it. (I like playing support characters.)

Gear! I get a Weapon, an Outfit, and an Accessory. They can be essentially anything I want. As tempting is it to have Scott's weapon be a phone cord or something, I think I want to divorce him from his Mundanian existence. Flexible weapon still sounds good, though, so how about a flail! Sweet! Ooh, maybe it should like snap into a solid shaft (lol) to be used as a bass guitar, too.

Outfit! I think Scott dresses mostly in beige and creams in his real life, so here in Ragnarock he wants contrast and color. So black leather, baby, pants and jacket, with a sparkly shirt that reflects light and changes color depending on the angle. 

Accessory. This helps me react in combat and helps me stand out. Hmm. For Scott, I think it's the rings. He wears a bunch of silver rings, all with different emblems and symbols and patterns. I think I'd probably tie these in to Power Moves and stuff as he advanced.

Speaking of Power Moves, I now get three, in additional to Furious (which I get from Fenrawr). I gotta take one General, one from Tone, and one from Position. But my options are limited at Notoriety 0, sadly (I've always found that in situations like this where you get some starting powers, you want more variety to start and less variety with later-level powers, since you're not likely to get as many of them.)

Anyway, I'll take Imbue Primal Energy for my General one; I can imbue an attack with Sky Energy. For Blüdgard, I'll take Blessings (I can give an extra die to a Bandmate), and for Fenrawr, I'll take Wild Child (lets me see in the dark, always generally useful). 

Last step is how I found myself in Ragnarock, but I answered that already. In Ragnarock, though, Scott is known as Lash (going with the flair, y'see). 

And that'll do it! This looks fun.

Character Creation: Marks: A Game for Fools

Oh what fools these mortals be. I pity the fool. Fool me once, etc. 

The Game: Marks: A Game for Fools
The Publisher: Charanaut, or Braden Liatris, I guess
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Marks is a weird game. It tells us up front that there's lots of mature content, it's about violence and abuse and all kinds of other horrible things, but the game itself is...one step removed, I guess? 

Like, the game it most closely reminds me of is Whispering Vault, with Riders maybe in there too. Characters (Fools) are people that fight monsters. Monsters ("glories") spring from someone doing something awful to the point that the awful actions take on physical (?) form, and then the Fools come in and kill them, and there are separate scenes for dealing with the glories and then fighting the World (the "World" is also the name for the GM, and with the PCs called "Fools" I thought we'd get more Tarot imagery, but nah). 

The system looks interesting, it's very involved and requires players to work together and cap dice results and interpret based on what kind of dice (clear or clouded) come up, but none of it is contextualized. At no point do we get an example of play or even any discussion about what this game might look like at the table. Honestly, it feels like a 5AM discussion on Sunday of Metatopia that someone wrote down, laid out, and put up on itch. It's not without promise, but if you know anything about PbtA games it feels like a lot of familiar elements, but without the attention to the flow of conversation and the principles of crafting a story that those games rely on. It's not written in character per se, but it's very formal and serious. 

Now, this is interesting in comparison to Gods of Metal: Ragnarock, which I started reading earlier today and decided I actually want to finish the book before I make a character because I'm digging it. And that game commits to its premise and takes a lot of care in explaining its core ethos and what the hell the players are doing. 

Anyway, let's make a character. First thing, I need to pick a design (class, playbook, archetype, whatever, a splat is a splat). I think I'll shall indulge my inner rabble-rouser and pick provoker.

(Gripe: Everything about these sheets could have fit onto one page, dammit.)

O...kay. So, in this game you have clear and clouded dice. If you roll a pool and you get success (sorry, "crowns", which is a 6) on clear dice but no clouded, that's a real success. If you get any "crowns" on clouded dice, it's a "muddle." No crowns at all, it's a failure. Cool? Cool. Blades in the Dark and its various descendants also put more probabilistic weight on getting qualified successes, that's fine, moves the story forward and all.

What annoys me is this:

That's the section of the character sheet for recording your dice in your "Lethal" stat. If there's some way to indicate which dice are clear and which are clouded, or how you mark those things to know which is which, I don't know. I assume you'd mark the boxes on the right for clear and the ones on the left for clouded, but we're never told that. That's what I'll do, anyway.

OK, so I get three clear dice in Bent, and two clouded dice in Lethal, Clever, and Carnal. And then I get 3, 2, and 1 clear dice to put into those traits. Hmm. So what do I want my Fool to be good at? I guess if my playbook thing is making threats, it wouldn't be terrible to be able to back them up. I'll put three clear dice in Lethal, two in Clever, and one in Carnal, how bout da. 

And then I pick two traits for my Carnal stat. I'll take Tough and Sexy, why not (there's a list).

Strain starts at 0, so nothing to do there.

And then the game does that fucking annoying thing where it breaks off of chargen to explain the game rules for several pages before jumping back in. No summary of chargen or anything, so it's easy to feel like you missed something. I'd blame it on this game obviously being a pretty early draft, but a lot of finished games do it, too, so I blame brain parasites. 

Anyway, next thing that I think I have to choose is my inexorable fate (this game has levels of pretentious terminology that would put Wraith to shame). 

And, not to harp, but:

But what does it mean to be a Fool? How would you choose it? 

Anyway, it would be tempting to pick the angsty "you end alone" fate, but I'm gonna pick No Rest for the Glorious - you end fighting. If I'm about making threats, it'd be interesting to have that finally come back around for my final fate. I guess.

Next up, transient gestalt. (Seriously, it's billed as a game for fools, but reads like a game for the tragically overeducated.) This is really just a few things that one would notice about the character. 

OK, well, I've been playing Baldur's Gate III and my characters have an unsettling tendency to lose eyes, so I'll say my character has a false eye made of obsidian (if this game is gonna go all-in on the Spooky, I'll play). Walks as though dancing, sure. Sharp voice, and then finally expensive suits. 

Heart's ease is the next thing. It's basically a thing that by doing, I find comfort. Doesn't have to be nice, of course, and that's fine, because I'm not seeing this guy as particularly nice. One of the examples on the list is "ruin someone's day," and I kinda like that, but I think I want to get more specific. How about "break something important," instead. Basically means I could steal or break someone's phone and it'd almost always qualify. (Do cell phones exist in this world? WHO KNOWS, there's no setting info!)

Pernicious drive is similar, but less specific, and frankly the difference isn't all that well explained, but whatever. I think mine is "I refuse to admit I'm wrong."

Weapon of choice has nothing to do with Fatboy Slim, here, it's just literally how the character kills. I think that this system would probably support something that's not a conventional weapon, a la cars veering off and smashing into people. Could I have my weapon of choice be "the curse of fatal bad luck?" Sure I could. I'm meant to give it a couple of elements, so I'll say takes a moment to manifest and makes the air go chilly. 

That's basically it. I see this character as a looming figure of death, causing "accidents" in a Final Destination kinda of way (which actually ties into his heart's ease, as I think about it). Killing is easy, but it's perhaps better to give people near misses and a good story to tell. Refuse to learn from the lesson, well, that's a risk. 

The word "name" never appears in this book in the context of "give your character a name," and since what a "Fool" is is never really explained, I don't know if we have them. But just in case, let's say he goes by Mr. Castor. He's not really on a first-name basis with anyone, you see.

That's it. Don't know what I was expecting, but I don't think this was it.

Cairn: Ratatosk Nearly Gets Eaten...Again

At a certain point, you have to ask yourself "am I just too delicious?" Here's last time.

The Knights get some sleep, and in the morning they reconvene at the Cider Mill Inn for tea and cricket frittatas. They talk about what Brock Westarwart's (the evil wizard bullfrog cannibal they're hunting) next move might be, and Ratatosk Longberry pulls out some note where he's considered who else Brock might be angry with.

See, Brock was the mastermind behind the Worm Rustling Caper (which began here), but the Knights foiled that and got most of the worms back. Giggs Boggleworth was the mole that helped Brock with the rustling (thanks to Brock's Charm spell), and Brock has already visited horrific revenge upon the mole. The Knights are probably also on his hit list, maybe Meester Snufflestar (the mole whose worms were rustled). He might be mad at Moriarty and Knuckles, but they're far too big for him to eat (we hope!). So who does that leave? Maybe Ripark, since the mole proprietor of the Root did help them (if somewhat reluctantly) resolve the worm rustling issue.

The Knights decide to go to the coast and talk to the otters; maybe they know aquatic hiding spots where Brock could be laying in wait. They find one otter smoking some fish, and he tells them that most of the guys are out in the bay fishing or clamming or whatever, but when they come in for lunch he'll point someone their way. They decide to take a boat out to the lighthouse island, as the lighthouse rubble has probably cooled enough for them to investigate.

They row out and Russelet Leatherwind, an expert fisherman as well as tracker, surveys the area and checks the eddies and tides and figures there might be a tunnel going into the interior of the island. It'd be impossible to get to without diving, though. Snootabur Shadowbough is willing, but the Knights decide that doing that without a buddy is unwise, so they send up a signal arrow and momentarily an otter swims up. He accompanies Snoot into the water and into a tunnel covered in seaweed. The tunnel comes up under the lighthouse, and Snoot figures that someone (that is, Brock) probably dug their way into the lighthouse's cellar. When the place collapsed, it mostly flooded.

The room reeks with the same filth that attacked the Knights yesterday, and Snoot has to hold her breath, but she looks around the room and sees names scrawled into the walls. Giggs Boggleworth. Ratatosk Longberry. Russelet Longberry. Keeble Brownberry. Rumdiggle Sunsong. Snootabur Shadowbough. Ripark.

Snoot and the otter swim back out and report all this to the Knights. The "hit list" is mostly what they figured, other than Keeble, the Lord Mayor of Cairn, being on the list. They head back to Cairn to go and warn Ripark and Keeble.

First they head to the Root, and inform Ripark of what's happening. They ask about Underground tunnels that might lead from the rivers to or near Town Hall, and Ripark says that there is one that, with a big of digging, could get you there. The Knights split up - Snoot and Rummy go to warn Keeble, while Ratatosk and Russ go to Ratatosk's lab. He has an idea about a concoction that would let him detect where the bullfrog has been, and with a few alchemical mixtures comes up with a powder that fizzes and goes blue when it touches frog-slime.

Meanwhile, Snoot tells Keeble what's happening, and Keeble gets a little panicky - he's a mouse, after all, and even the Awakened mice of Cairn are under no illusion as to what bigger animals think of them (that is, food). The Knights suggest he move his office to the Citadel for a while, and he enthusiastically agrees and starts putting together a go-bag. 

Rummy turns into a bear and scoops him up to take him to the Citadel, but then a hedgehog runs up and tells Snoot that something is happening at the Cider Mill Inn! Snoot and Rummy rush over there, and find everyone pouring out of the Inn and a cloud of stinging insects swarming around. Snoot finds Alyere Loregood, the proprietor, and asks her what happened. She says that suddenly, a swarm of insects - deerflies, horseflies, bees - just starting appearing and stinging people. She saw one of them just kind of evaporate - "Magic bugs," mutters Snoot. "This might have been a distraction." She sends up a signal arrow.

Russ and Ratatosk hear the arrow and rush out of Ratatosk's house, but when they get to the bridge over the Bramble River, they spot huge frog's eyes staring up from the water. Russ wastes no time, he lets arrows fly. He hits, but the arrows spark against the frog's skin, almost like it was metal! Brock opens wide and his horrible sticky tongue smashes into Ratatosk's face, yanking him into the river and then into Brock's mouth.

Ratatosk shrieks in terror and pours a bunch of sneezing powder into Brock's face, but it does nothing. Brock punches Ratatosk in his kidneys and the squirrel realizes with horror that Brock is trying to eat him alive. But Ratatosk has a secret weapon - Direward Powder! He mixed up this powerful alchemical solution and combined it with oil to make a paste, and now smears it on himself desperately. Meanwhile, he can hear the thump thump thump of arrows hitting the outside of the frog's body.

The Direward Paste works, fortunately. Brock spits Ratatosk out and growls "I'll eat you yet", and then vanishes into the water. Rummy and Snoot, hearing the commotion, arrive and Rummy scoops Ratatosk out of the river. 

Ratatosk is bruised and battered, so they run him to Omat Thunderhop, the hare healer. Omat casts a healing spell, there's a crackle of lightning, and Ratatosk springs up, perfectly healthy. The group of them talk over their options, and they come up with a plan.

They mobilize the citizens of Cairn. The smaller animals - mice, rats, squirrels and so on - are sent to the Citadel or to higher ground, away from the rivers. The big animals, the possums and beavers and otters, patrol the banks. In particular, the beavers search the riverbeds. It doesn't take long to find something. A beaver surfaces with a bullfrog, much too small to be Brock - it's Bryla Slipperskin, a frog druid (the Knights met her once before). She alive, but unconscious. Ratatosk isn't a wizard, but he recognizes this spell - it's called the Hand of Glory and it induces a magical sleep. He sprinkles a little Ennervating Powder on her and she wakes up with a start.

She explains that Brock found her and Charmed her, and convinced her to unleash the swarm of bugs at the Inn. ("Yeah, he does that," mutters Snoot.) They talk a little about Brock, and Bryla reveals that in addition to being a wizard, Brock is a scrapper, expert in hand to hand combat ("that explains my kidneys!" says Ratatosk). Scrappers are capable of honing their bodies to be armor-like, and their hands to be lethal. The Knights note this, but they feel they can win this fight. After all, they have two marksmen and a goddamn bear. 

They get some nets and soak them in Direward solution (with the help of Asta Ringrunner, Ratatosk's mentor), and then set them up at chokepoints across the Bramble and Swiftwater Rivers. Ratatosk goes out to the banks near the Observatory and pretends to forage - he's the bat. Russelet and Snootabur set themselves up in with clear sightlines, and Rummy, still in bear form, hides as best she can.

They don't have long to wait. Ratatosk suddenly starts wandering in circles, confused. Snootabur spots Brock slipping out of the water, and fires an arrow. That signals Russ, who sticks three more in the frog's torso. Rummy charges in and scoops up Ratatosk, hoping to pull him out of harm's way ("Oh, look, I'm in the sky now"), but Brock still isn't done. He launches his tongue and it smashes into Ratatosk's chest, pulling him again towards the frog's maw.

But Snootabur is ready. She fires an arrow and skewer Brock's tongue. It goes limp and Ratatosk lands on the ground. Brock pulls his tongue back (without his intended dinner), but can't get his tongue in his mouth. He gurgles, and collapses, dead.

Rummy walks up and prods him, and then picks up his body. She stares quietly, perhaps saddened - she never wants to kill another Awakened, even a Dire one. But the sounds of celebration go up as the other citizens of Cairn see the "monster" defeated.

The Knights take the body to the Lodge so that Whisper Greendawn, Omat Thunderhop, and Asta Ringrunner can examine it. Snoot asks if there's something on the body, some indication of how Brock became Dire. Omat finds no injury or abnormality (aside from how big he's gotten), and Whisper gently explains that most of the time, becoming Dire is a matter of falling so deep into Discord that you can't get out. The darkness isn't something that happens from the outside. In Brock's case, it was hunger, and that hunger consumed him.

Omat tells everyone to leave; he intends to cut Brock open and examine his stomach. Ratatosk stays, and what he sees during that autopsy will haunt him forever. But it's over. Brock's body is burned on a pyre, to a gathering that the Knights find maybe a bit too celebratory. Rummy sits near the pyre and plays a somber song, but the other Knights don't join. They're all coping with this in their own way.

Summer continues and the days grow longer. What further adventures await the Knights? And how many more adventures can their souls bear?