RPG
Fall – Episode 23 “Q&A”
The next in the quick fire Fall recaps is episode 23, Q&A aka the one with the romantic ending. But I get ahead of myself.
The episode picks up exactly after the last one left off. The team are driving around Fall River with their people divination wire trying to track down Xavier.
Fall – Episode 22 “Icarus gets his Wings”
It’s been awhile since my last Fall write up, four episodes to be exact. I’ll try to be succinct and will leave out most of the dialogue, for that head on over to Jenni’s write ups (the link is at the bottom of the page).
First up is episode 22, Icarus gets his Wings.
This is seriously awesome!
Pictish Rock Art a Written Language. (from Boing Boing)
Although I suddenly realise I’ve never seen anyone use pictograms for a fantasy language. Odd. But my theoretical ‘Celtic islands dark fantasy game’ is definitely going to have a ancient pictographic language in it.
It’s been a while – how about some links?
I have totally let Thursday link day get away from me. But here’s a few…
- The LA Times writing on D&D.
- An interview from Wizards with Zak S. Zak writes a really cool blog called Playing D&D With Porn Stars which is mostly general musings on his style of D&D and playing with a group who aren’t traditional gamers. Seriously – it’s a really interesting read from a rally interesting guy.
- E6 – it’s a style of D&D that involves limiting levels to level 6 and not progressing further. Low level play for the win! There’s rules for 3/3.5 and rules for 4e. My favourite levels of D&D are a bit beyond this – say 8 till 12 – but I like the basic idea a lot.
- A Spanish Civil War card game! Two of my favourite obsessions in one! The Spanish Civil War is a really underutilised part of history for gaming I think – one day I’ll write my Call of Cthulhu Spanish Civil War game.
Finally here’s a TED talk from game designer Jane McGonigal about how if we increase our weekly online gaming hours to 21 billion we can save the world. It’s complete bullshit, but it’s interesting bullshit!
Meet Victor Wong
A while back I said I’d put up some old PC backgrounds. Here’s another one from another of Kyle the Viking Hat GM’s games. This one was Osere, a modern espionage game using Kyle’s home-brewed rules. Here’s the character – Victor Wong. Criminal.
Victor was born Wong Ke Lo to a comfortable middle class family in Taipei in 1979. His father, Wong Fai Hun, was a businessman with vague connections to the Bamboo Union, one of Taiwan’s main triad organisations, through his Kuomintang background. An only child, Victor was an unimpressive student, a loner who only found solace in the gymnasium. Victor was a good gymnast, but lacked the competitive drive to truly excel.
After the senior Wong annoyed the wrong Bamboo Union functionary, Victor was targeted for recruitment – a subtle punishment for the upstanding businessman. He was an easy target as his antisocial tendencies made him comfortable with the life of crime while welcoming the social contact the triad provided. His father was mortified, but warned to stay away by Victor’s new ‘friends’ He was only 16, but quickly became a useful second story man for the Triad, breaking in to allow enforcers into buildings as well as minor thefts. The Union taught Victor to fight and use a gun as well as the basic intricacies of alarm systems.
At 17, Victor was nearly convicted for burglary after a job went wrong. Fai Hun interceded to bribe the cops responsible for the bust and decided he had to get the family out. Immigration to Australia seemed the best way to get Victor away from the triad as well as avoid any further shame to the family. In 1996 the Wongs moved to Melbourne as economic migrants, buying a news agents and settling in Box Hill. Victor was just young enough to come with his parents.
Melbourne didn’t help Victor’s behaviour. He quickly fell in with 14K, a Sydney based triad with Melbourne offshoots, and got back into his old ways and quickly became estranged from his parents. But a period in jail in 2001 helped scare Victor, convincing him he wasn’t invincible. After he got out, he moved to Bidawal, not telling any of his triad friends where he was going. He started to look around for other ways to make a living, scraping by on odd jobs and the occasional break in but generally trying to keep his head down. Eventually Sonny Kim, the Bidawal Police Department’s Asian Community Liaison officer, told Victor that he might know of some work for someone with skills like his. Sonny was as corrupt as they come, but he could see that Victor was trying to get out. Now Victor is with OSERE. He’s hoping that he’ll be able to make a living, find some of what attracted him to triad life and stay out of jail.
Fall – Episode 21 “Reaching my Limits, Part 2″
For the past two weeks, since our epic session, I’ve been trying to write this actual play report on Fall. I’ve found it extremely hard, as it was a dark and difficult road that my Slayer started down. I’ll warn you this will be long, and may have emo musings littered through out. Don’t say I never give you an out!
The coolest sounding RPG book I’ve heard of in a while
Lucha Libre HERO! I can’t imagine ever getting around to running this but I like the fact that I live in a word where it can exist.
(via Ken Hite)
Need a 1920′s character photo?
I had a GM a while back who required us to all get photos for our characters. It wasn’t something I’d done before and I’m not sure we really used them much but I thought it was a decent idea.
Today I found (via Very Short List) this cool flickr set of 1920′s passport photos. They’re of famous people but they’re largely not recognisable (and not all of them are still famous). Perfect for a Pulp game or some 20′s Call of Cthulhu.
Want to play ars Magica? Live in Singapore?
If so check us out!
My Gamemaster is looking to expand our group up to 4 players (we’re currently at two). It’s a fun game (that I should post about more) so hopefully we’ll find someone soon.
Fall – Episode 20 “Reaching my Limits, Part 1″
This weeks episode was another mostly character driven affair. We were all also pretty tired and/or sick so things moved kind of slowly, but not in a bad way. We had some great character development and I started Alex down a path that I’ve recently realised is totally in keeping with her character. So with out further ado…