Return from sabbatical

Unfortunately, looks like I'm not exactly going to meet my goal of posting once every day this month, seeing as I spent the last week looking for apartments with my girlfriend in the sunny state of New Jersey. However, I did spend that trip listening to three different caper/heist novels, which have really stoked my creative fires on this D&D Heist thing. So within the next few days, I'll hopefully be bringing you some of my new ideas, including the beginnings of my Whimsy deck, an analysis of how each D&D class fits into a 'string,' as Donald E Westlake calls it and some floorplans of potential heists in the inimitable graph paper dungeon style.

But to get us started, here's a completely legit YouTube link to the entirety of the Castle of Cagliostro, one of the greatest anime films of all time and a fantastic heist film in its own right.



See you soon.

ALL OUTTA BUBBLEGUM!

Holy shit, next time I don't have anything to do with my friends, I'm just going to whip this game out, put on the Showdown in Little Tokyo soundtrack and play ALL OUTTA BUBBLEGUM!

All Outta Bubblegum

This game is copyright 2001, Michael "Epoch" Sullivan and Jeffrey Grant. If you want to repost it or whatever, drop me an email.

Characters in All Outta Bubblegum have one stat -- Bubblegum. It's technically a number which varies from 0 through 8, though the designers highly, highly recommend that you don't do anything so banal as write down a number, and, instead, pass out actual sticks of bubblegum to the players. This will also help when you play All Outta Bubblegum drunk, which is, let's be blunt, probably the only time you'd even consider playing this game.

Bubblegum always starts out at 8.

Resolution

Any action which does not fall under the broad category of "kicking ass" is resolved by rolling a d10. If the number rolled is equal to or less than the amount of bubblegum the character has left, then the character succeeds in his task.

Any action which falls under the broad umbrella of "kicking ass" is also resolved by rolling a d10. However, in this case, you wish to roll greater than the amount of bubblegum that you have left.

Losing Bubblegum

Whenever you fail a non-combat roll, you lose a stick of Bubblegum. You may also sacrifice a stick of Bubblegum before the roll to ensure success.

Bubblegum also rates your damage. If someone else succeeds in a roll of asskicking against you, you lose one stick of bubblegum.

Zero Bubblegum

When you lose your last stick of bubblegum, you are officially all outta bubblegum. You may no longer attempt any kind of non-asskicking activity. Simple devices like, say, the handles of doors confound you (eerily enough, you have no problem field-stripping a .50 caliber machinegun to clear a jam in 15 seconds flat). However, you automatically succeed in any asskicking-related activity. You are a nearly unstoppable ball of bubblegum-less fury. When someone else succeeds in an asskicking roll against you, they roll a d10. If they roll a 10, you are knocked out. If they roll a 1 through 9, they've only succeeded in making you, if possible, even more angry.

However, bear in mind that it's relatively easy to trap a zero-bubblegum person in a situation he's totally incapable of dealing with.


There ya go. Think up your own damn adventures and campaign settings.

Seriously, it's genius. Like Trollbabe for 80s action movies.

Mutant Future Inspirado: Sabata

A lot of my post-apocalyptic inspirational material is pretty straightforward. The Road Warrior is obviously at the center of it all, surrounded by its like-minded brethren like the Fallout games, Interstate '76, Six-String Samurai and Fist of the North Star alike. But there's a fair amount of idiosyncratic influence that also inform my idea of a post-apocalyptic game. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to talk a little about what's informing my latest post-apocalyptic shenanigans.

Sabata (and other ridiculous Westerns)

I've said before that the post-apocalyptic genre feels right for me when it's close to being a western. The Road Warrior, the keystone film of the post-apocalyptic genre, fits the redemptive anti-hero western model almost note for note, only with cars replacing horses. Me, I've been watching westerns since my parents showed me Silverado when I was 5 years old and the genre is still very dear to my heart, not to mention my gaming. The Deadlands campaign I ran for my college friends was probably the most successful piece of gaming I've ever done.

The poster for Lee Van Cleef's Sabata has been my background design ever since I started this blog and for good reason. I mean, just LOOK at it! Explosions, dynamite, doing it, a BANJO that's also a GUN! People seem to have this idea that Spaghetti westerns were all gritty, violent and intense affairs, primarily because every Spaghetti western they've seen has starred Clint Eastwood and was directed by Sergio Leone. There's a whole world of Italian westerns out there and most of them are wacky as hell. Sabata and its sequels are fantastic primarily because of this over-the-topness. The banjo gun is just the tip of the iceberg: the series has everything from ball-bearing throwing shoes to suspender slingshots, Yul Brynner's faaabulous fringed black leather ensemble and director Gianfranco Parolini's obsession with finding ways to get actor Aldo Canti to jump off of rooftops onto trampolines. Seriously, the guy's in every Sabata movie as a different character who jumps off stuff.

You can watch Sabata for free on Hulu and Adios Sabata on Netflix Instant. Unfortunately, Return of Sabata isn't available in any easy streaming format, but it's constantly on Encore Westerns and other cable channels that show Spaghetti westerns off and on, so that you too can hear the totally awesome Return of Sabata theme.

EDIT: I can't believe that I didn't actually finish that sentence.