Thank you to everyone who has been following For A Fistful of Coppers recently. As of now, I have over 50 people following my intermittently updated ramblings and I'd like to thank each and every one of you. I appreciate every comment that I get on my posts and ideas. It's one of the reasons that I love the game blog world so much and I think I'm more confident in my posting than ever before.
As of recently, I've been binging on Dortmunder and Discworld novels and watching classic heist movies, including the Sting and the Castle of Cagliostro. I think that something really clicked for me with the Bugbears and Bankvaults post and hopefully, I can synthesize it into something fun for everyone. All I know is that I'd better start working on that Whimsy/Plot Complications deck, because what's a heist if it doesn't have unforeseen consequences?
Until next time...
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ogrim's Eleven: Or Bugbears and Bankvaults
I've been thinking about this post since Society of Torch, Pole and Rope talked about something similar with the Tomb of Horrors, so here goes...
In recent weeks, I've been trying to understand why the idea of the old-school dungeon crawl or megadungeon hasn't really inspired me that much. I seem to be able to comprehend the idea of the picaresque hero and the simple interpretable rules that seem so important to old-school games, but I really want to understand more of what's appealing about these places. I'm not really a big fantasy literature buff and the novels I do read tend to have very modern genre attitudes, like the Dresden Files and the Discworld series. The Tomb of Horrors post over at Society of Torch, Pole and Rope got me thinking hard on the subject. I love movies like The Sting, Ocean's Eleven and Snatch and television like Leverage and White Collar, which share a whole lot of elements with the dungeon crawl: assembling a crew, loading up on the requisite equipment, edging down corridors and disabling traps. So why couldn't I apply this love of a plan coming together to dungeons?
I think it's because they're not active enough for me.
Now before the entire D&D blogosphere jumps down my throat about their dungeons and experiences and whatever, note that I'm not saying that the megadungeon mode is a bad thing: it just may not be for me. Something about looting long abandoned temples just doesn't excite me that much. Sure, you may have just found the Eye of Hrumesh and taken it from its rightful temple, but where's the fallout from that? Who have you pissed off? Where are you going to lay low?
I think that I need to run old-school D&D like a Dortmunder novel: putting together a crew of quirky characters to do a job, whether it's trying to steal a magical artifact from a prominent guild leader or being hired by a scholar looking to retrieve significant findings in the field. A Magic-user casting Charm Person on the janitor to smuggle a pair of Thieves into the building while the Fighter looks on with a crossbow, ready to intervene if things get nasty (which they most likely will). Magical university buildings set up with Explosive Runes traps for nosy lockpicks or wizards trying to Knock their way into a fortune.
Stuff like that gets me fired up.
In recent weeks, I've been trying to understand why the idea of the old-school dungeon crawl or megadungeon hasn't really inspired me that much. I seem to be able to comprehend the idea of the picaresque hero and the simple interpretable rules that seem so important to old-school games, but I really want to understand more of what's appealing about these places. I'm not really a big fantasy literature buff and the novels I do read tend to have very modern genre attitudes, like the Dresden Files and the Discworld series. The Tomb of Horrors post over at Society of Torch, Pole and Rope got me thinking hard on the subject. I love movies like The Sting, Ocean's Eleven and Snatch and television like Leverage and White Collar, which share a whole lot of elements with the dungeon crawl: assembling a crew, loading up on the requisite equipment, edging down corridors and disabling traps. So why couldn't I apply this love of a plan coming together to dungeons?
I think it's because they're not active enough for me.
Now before the entire D&D blogosphere jumps down my throat about their dungeons and experiences and whatever, note that I'm not saying that the megadungeon mode is a bad thing: it just may not be for me. Something about looting long abandoned temples just doesn't excite me that much. Sure, you may have just found the Eye of Hrumesh and taken it from its rightful temple, but where's the fallout from that? Who have you pissed off? Where are you going to lay low?
I think that I need to run old-school D&D like a Dortmunder novel: putting together a crew of quirky characters to do a job, whether it's trying to steal a magical artifact from a prominent guild leader or being hired by a scholar looking to retrieve significant findings in the field. A Magic-user casting Charm Person on the janitor to smuggle a pair of Thieves into the building while the Fighter looks on with a crossbow, ready to intervene if things get nasty (which they most likely will). Magical university buildings set up with Explosive Runes traps for nosy lockpicks or wizards trying to Knock their way into a fortune.
Stuff like that gets me fired up.
Friday, March 4, 2011
New layout
Trying something a little new with my layout here, as I was kind of getting sick of the limited space of my old white-on-white formatting.
Yeah, I know it's not a long post, but it's a post for today and I'm sticking to my schedule! There'll be a longer one tomorrow that I've already started working on, I promise.
In closing, have an average weekend!
Yeah, I know it's not a long post, but it's a post for today and I'm sticking to my schedule! There'll be a longer one tomorrow that I've already started working on, I promise.
In closing, have an average weekend!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A New Direction
I realized today that I was spending more time on writing up space opera races and weaponry than I did on assignments and group work for library school. Unfortunately, that's one thing that I can't afford to do right now, so Assholes in Space will probably be riding the backburner for the time being.
However, that's not to say that I'm going to put this month of blog updating on hiatus. I'm just going to take a different approach. A little bit slower with development and brainstorming, since I'm probably not going to get the chance to run this thing until the end of the month anyhow.
However, that's not to say that I'm going to put this month of blog updating on hiatus. I'm just going to take a different approach. A little bit slower with development and brainstorming, since I'm probably not going to get the chance to run this thing until the end of the month anyhow.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Assholes in Space: The Mixtape
Along with my initial concept of the Assholes in Space campaign, I made a mixtape of setting-appropriate soundtrack music that helped me visualize the setting. I tried to find as many of them as I could on YouTube, but there are definitely some important ones missing. It's a pretty potent blend of trad ska and reggae, hip hop, electronics and hardcore/noise.
Minutemen - This Ain't No Picnic (embedding disabled by request)
Minutemen - This Ain't No Picnic (embedding disabled by request)
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Assholes in Space: A Brief Introduction
Along with continuing my ideas for the Motherlode D&D campaign and adaptations of S John Ross's Uresia for use with Basic-style D&D, I want to use the month of March to talk about an old campaign idea that has been sitting on my mental backburner for a while now, known colloquially as Assholes in Space. The original idea for the game came from a very interesting combination of influences that created a very specific image of a campaign setting in my mind.
Most science fiction fans have read Neuromancer. It's the book that launched a thousand dark futures and is directly responsible for Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS Cyberpunk and dozens of other less well known roleplaying games. In my senior year of college, I was listening to a BBC Radio 'play of the week' adaptation of Neuromancer before going to sleep and what really stuck out to me about the story in audio form was the Rastafarian Space Navy. I'd always liked Maelcum in the novel, but hearing the reggae thumping in the background of a slow motion deep space cruise just made me think, "There must be characters like this in every science-fiction setting." Somewhere in the Star Wars universe, there must be a guy who thinks that living in space is just the coolest and spends his days floating around smoking space-weed and listening to space-reggae (there are probably names for these in the Star Wars universe, but my EU knowledge is a bit rusty.) The combination of music with the silent background of space reminded me of Cowboy Bebop's fantastic eclectic soundtrack and the western twang of zero gravity in the Firefly universe.
The other major influence was actually a Wushu play-by-post game on RPGnet that I was involved in called A Million Billion Bastards (right here if you've got an account.) The setting was described as "Take Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Getbackers, Xenosaga, Ghost in the Shell, and a dozen other influences, toss 'em in a blender, and hit puree." It was a real melange of influences, all decidedly cinematic, and while it lasted, it was really fun. But what I really took away from it was the 'anything goes' idea of worldbuilding. Don't worry about whether or not something in an over-the-top cinematic galaxy is realistic or even plausible. Don't be afraid to just wing it. Cybernetics, psionics, rifles as long as some people are tall, four-armed aliens and genetically altered killing machines are all welcome in this universe. Fun is fun and if the campaign can accommodate everyone's idea of fun, so much the better.
Most science fiction fans have read Neuromancer. It's the book that launched a thousand dark futures and is directly responsible for Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS Cyberpunk and dozens of other less well known roleplaying games. In my senior year of college, I was listening to a BBC Radio 'play of the week' adaptation of Neuromancer before going to sleep and what really stuck out to me about the story in audio form was the Rastafarian Space Navy. I'd always liked Maelcum in the novel, but hearing the reggae thumping in the background of a slow motion deep space cruise just made me think, "There must be characters like this in every science-fiction setting." Somewhere in the Star Wars universe, there must be a guy who thinks that living in space is just the coolest and spends his days floating around smoking space-weed and listening to space-reggae (there are probably names for these in the Star Wars universe, but my EU knowledge is a bit rusty.) The combination of music with the silent background of space reminded me of Cowboy Bebop's fantastic eclectic soundtrack and the western twang of zero gravity in the Firefly universe.
The other major influence was actually a Wushu play-by-post game on RPGnet that I was involved in called A Million Billion Bastards (right here if you've got an account.) The setting was described as "Take Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Getbackers, Xenosaga, Ghost in the Shell, and a dozen other influences, toss 'em in a blender, and hit puree." It was a real melange of influences, all decidedly cinematic, and while it lasted, it was really fun. But what I really took away from it was the 'anything goes' idea of worldbuilding. Don't worry about whether or not something in an over-the-top cinematic galaxy is realistic or even plausible. Don't be afraid to just wing it. Cybernetics, psionics, rifles as long as some people are tall, four-armed aliens and genetically altered killing machines are all welcome in this universe. Fun is fun and if the campaign can accommodate everyone's idea of fun, so much the better.
T-Minus One Month
From now on, I'll be taking an hour or so every day just to write stuff for this blog and post it. It may not be perfect, but at least it will be consistent.
Hope to see you there. :)
Hope to see you there. :)
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