Bright End of Nowhere

You know, I don't usually mean to go all radio silence on this. It just kinda ends up happening. I've been fairly distracted lately by mechanics hacking for a high-action LARP universe some friends and I are spinning up. If we succeed, we'll have the new standard for a few years on how to run these. And at least one mechanic, if it's accepted, has the potential to significantly alter how we play these games tactically.

We ran a mechanics test today, and caught a lot of the bugs at low levels. So now to fix 'em. I'm also pretty pleased that I wore my Vibrams, braced both my knees (using a reinforced brace on the bad one), and was able to run around on concrete in a Nerf firefight for 2 hours with no pain. Seriously, I don't remember the last time that happened.

Downing glycosamine tonight to keep this progress up.

Speaking of "Things to Make Me Feel Less Falling-Apart", I've been contemplating the idea of trying climbing. My housemates all do it, and I've been wary because of my knees. But yesterday I was talking to another person who tried climbing for awhile, and she said that although women will use their legs more than their arms as compared to men, climbing really doesn't apply too much torque and strain to the knees. (Bouldering is a different story) I know there are some climbers around here; any advice? Now that my knees survived the stress test today, I'm seriously thinking of giving it a try.

And now to dive back into LaTeX.

My tabletop campaign starts tomorrow. I'm a little nervous, despite the fact I've been prepping for it for the last 2 weeks. My current plan is to have the sandbox ready, let my players do whatever, and then figure out where I need to build sandcastles for them to storm. We'll see how this works.

Somewhat relatedly, since I'm running an ASoIaF campaign, that's where my headspace has been. And I have friends who encourage crazy ideas. And there was an image macro and now I found that I really want the IM/ASoIaF crossover where ( slight spoilers )

I am not alone in this. Internet, why does this not exist yet?

I am also in the process of moving. When did I get so much STUFF? I remember when I could fit my entire life into 5 rubbermaid containers, 2 suitcases, and a duffelbag. Then again, that was 7 (!!) years ago, and I lacked critical possessions. Like a bed.

Still addicted to Dragon Age: Origins. I, er, may have fallen in love with the setting. It's bloody and there's political intrigue and the Blight is near enough to an apocalypse to count. (There always needs to be an "it's the end of the world!" plot) I'm also loving the fact that I can be snarky, and was absolutely delighted when one of the dialogue responses was literally what I said out loud to the computer.

It's kind of fun playing the Human Noble origin as "I know how to behave in public and according to my station, but I have a sharp tongue when I want to". (And I wish I could find my PC's brother, because I'm just about convinced that the Cousland siblings were bloody hilarious and absolute terrors as children. Huzzah, personal canon.)

Also awkward: suddenly getting The Talk from one of my party members. I apparently triggered a flag somewhere. Because the fact my PC was involved with another party member was news to me. Which leads me to imagining her blinking a lot and going "wait, what?"

And the party member I thought would hate me forever and leave the party (until I figured out how to talk to him) is the first one other than my dog to have a 100% approval rating. *dances*

In other news, a strange and wonderful thing happened on Friday. At 3pm, after coming into work at 11am and taking lunch, I found that I had...nothing in my queue. I'd designed a part for someone, finished QCing the last order I had, and then wrestling with Ubuntu to install MATLAB and Eagle on the computer running the new CNC mill. It was very strange. But not unwelcome! I like being able to stare at TVTropes and Metafilter guilt-free.

Which I've been doing a lot of, because my GM team for the tenday we're writing is picking up speed. We're juuust about out of the major planning phase, and I expect the hardcore writing of characters, mechanics, and plot to start soon. Which is good, as one of the GMs got hired by a company out in SF and will be remote for the majority of the writing. Good thing we have a repo.

*tilts head*

I seem to have A Thing for creating "exceedingly reluctant rulers". You know, when they find out a fief/kingdom/planet wants to make them ruler after they've been raised away from it, they keep trying to figure out how to give it back. Crown = Do Not Want.

Amusingly, both of them are female, in systems that rely on first-born inheritance, regardless of gender. Oh boy, I have A Thing. (Yes, Ashura, I am talking about you, however did you guess? You just got company in this category.)

In other, non-original fic news, I wish this apocafic I'm plotting would grow the rest of its plot. I'm so going to be tapped out of crazy Gnostic traditions, various mythologies, and legends really damn soon at this rate. Because I had the brilliant idea of adding a tenday on top of plotting the aforementioned P3/P4 apocafic. Why is the tenday add to that load? Because the last time I wrote a tenday, every corporate research project in game was organized via mythological tradition by company (one named all their projects after Norse, another from really esoteric Jewish tradition, etc).

I am insane.

-Crack fic has broken 10k words. I haven't even finished Part I (really, Act I) yet. I'm vaguely worried about how the hell I'm gonna post this thing. Vaguely. I'll figure something out when the time comes. (Er, sorry if this seems like all I'm talking about lately. It's just seriously eaten my brain.)

-Speaking of brain nomming, I've apparently found myself writing a SIK game based on the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 'verse. Why, I don't know. But I made a fusion table! Hurray for d20s.

-We will NOT speak of how my character for my friend's Persona-based tabletop seems to be influencing the crack fic development. She is accomplishing this mostly by looking sad and pathetic at me in my head and why can I not resist a character's puppy-eyes?!

I swear there is something wrong with me.

-We will also not speak of how the Atlantis d20 rulebook has stalled. All I need is flavor text on NPCs, an intro, and damn vehicle stats. It's really just grunge work that I keep being a lazy ass about and putting off.

-I should really buy my Chicago con tickets at some point. And I guess autograph tickets so I can get the Core d20 book signed, because I am a dork.

-Leverage makes me happy. We just finished s1 last night. We're savoring it, like a fine wine. Okay, actually, we're well aware that once we catch up, getting our fix is going to be less immediate.

Note to Self: Must not design human-form replicator stats so that they are the equivalent of fighting a Tarrasque. That would be poor.

Also, must refrain from putting in the stats for a gazebo.


Maybe one day soon I will stop eating/breathing d20 so I can work on something else, dammit. The likelihood of that, however, is rapidly diminishing. (Oh god, someone tear my brain's attention away from this. I have HOMEWORK I need to do!)

This is all shanghairain's fault, by the way.

So, I was mentioning to him about the possibility of rebooting Spearhead, the short-lived Stargate campaign I ran. The last session left me with a one-shot NPC who demanded to be plot-critical and a need to figure out a better plot. On the reboot, it would start later in the timeline (in s8 instead of right after "Heroes"), among other things. The mouthy NPC's plot was/is better suited to the Pegasus Galaxy than the Milky Way, so eventually, the PCs would have to get to Atlantis.

Then the brainstorm struck: redo SGA entirely, from "Rising", as a tabletop.

It's been done before: a friend of mine redid the Star Wars prequel trilogy as a tabletop, to fantastic results.

The only thing is, the Stargate d20 books are rare and sort of out of print. There is no Atlantis supplement, beyond the random .doc file I found on the internet last year. And I can write a better one. So I am apparently writing a supplement .pdf document for an Atlantis setting. For a Spearhead reboot in the Pegasus. Where the PCs will have to deal with rationing everything (including bullets), where Elizabeth Weir has a +50 Bluff and Diplomacy modifier, and where maybe things will go differently.

I have a good feeling about this one.

auguris, you're going to hate me for this. Consider this fair warning.

One would think, with how steampunk is becoming more and more popular (er, according to it appearing suddenly in a weekly newspaper here. As my friend DMark said, "wait, does this mean we liked it before it was mainstream?"), that it would be easier to find media within the genre. Actually, scratch that. One would think that with some of the first great "sci-fi" novels being steam-driven (Jules Verne-inspired works, I'm looking at you), and with series like Neal Stephanson's Baroque Cycle, there would be a decent tabletop RPG system that uses steampunk.

Apparently, they're all either out of print or just plain suck. And no, DnD 3.5ed Eberron campaign setting doesn't quite fit the bill. Trust me, I've played it.

It's getting to the point where I'm getting ready to just throw my hands up in the air and say I'm going to write my own system. Actually, that might be the best way to go. I just need a decent idea of how/what to base the mechanics on. (A friend of mine is starting a campaign in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 'verse, specifically one based on Persona 3. Combination of dice and essentially gin rummy...with tarot cards. Rules doc is about 12 pages, and it'll be neat to see if this works.) I'd just need to get off my phobia of writing mechanics for non-LARPs. This may be because I don't trust myself to have enough experience to draw on for tabletop mechanics, having only really played d20 and Shadowrun, while I've got a decent sense nowadays on what mechanics work or not for a LARP. Do I want to keep dice? Probably, because they're great for random number generation. But how everything interacts, what kinds of rules, etc? That's going to take some work. It'd be far, far easier to find a system that mostly does what I want and tweak it.

On the other hand, creating my own system for this allows me to make up all the rules and make the universe feel like a coherent...thing. And since I think for this game I want to focus a bit more on the role-playing aspect than mechanics god-modding, I can vastly simplify the rules and mechanics to force that aspect. Because the simple fact right now is that I can't find a rulesystem that will work for a world that is very steampunk, has Lovecraftian horrors lurking perhaps, but is set in essentially Boston circa modified 1950s or even modified present-day (modern technolgy, only steampunk. Yes, this means we have airships. Because airships are cool.) Some come close, but actually getting my hands on a rulebook might require a minor Act of God.

Then again, I can always put this on the backburner and work on "Pirates of Dark Matter" campaign setting, which I've been promising people. Also, on a minorly different note, I think I'm writing yet-another-LARP. Yeah, this always happens.

I put Spearhead on hiatus until after finals, because not even I could deal, even though I have about 1.5 runs planned out already. At least this gives me more time to make sure the runs are good, and to iron out some plot things. I should also actually stat out the NPC SG team my players seem to get paired up with, and actually give them, you know, personalities. Although they spontaneously started developing character when I was just having them be talking roles. And work on an NPC who was originally just going to be a throwaway character but has instead wormed his way into being integral to the plot. Pesky NPC. *pets him*

Also, I think it's been pretty firmly established that Spearhead takes place in an AU. Why? Well, we have some examples of competent Goa'uld, and now an Ancient who apparently had some sense of moral responsibility. Um...

(And that's all I can say here because I know I've got players who read this. Just as well that these points have already been pretty much revealed. Hm. Maybe I should make a filter when I need to yell for help at people.)

On a completely different topic, I need to figure out how the rules and terminology of poker. I know the basics (all that decking was good for something), but I don't feel like looking through the tarballs of past games just to find a damn hacking greensheet. Especially since this has absolutely nothing to do with a game.

(And therefore, there is duckcat...)

Draft of all the sheets for Troy I needed to do are done, and as a bonus, we even have the game casted. Still got about half a day to go over it and make sure there isn't something truly stupid in there like giving players 15HP and having 24 different types of weapons/damage and expecting them to keep track of it.

Now to hope I don't die during prod Friday night/Saturday morning...

And, seeing as how I don't have anything due the rest of this week, maybe I can even, you know, write other things. (Also, need to stop listening to FFXII OST. Doing so while thinking about Stargate leads to truly bizarre and interesting lines of thought.)