| Happy Birthday |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|12:57 am] |
Here's another:
More soon. I promise
-- Ben |
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| Henry Gibson: 1935 - 2009 |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|12:53 pm] |
The Nutty Professor, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Charlotte's Web, The Blues Brothers, The Burbs, and of course, Kentucky Fried Movie:
-- Ben |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|12:16 pm] |
I have recently deactivated my Facebook and Myspace accounts. Nothing personal against anyone (certainly not against any of my friends on either site), but I just wasn't using them at all, the only contact I had with them was the bogus friend request spam I was getting on a regular basis, and trying to find any useful info on anyone's profile page would always give me a horrible headache.
-- Ben |
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| Chapter 13 Press at Connecticon |
[Jul. 29th, 2009|11:48 pm] |
Dregg and I will be up in Hartford, CT for Connecticon this weekend. I will be running Spookybeans demos, and he will be taking the new Pulp Era rules for a spin or two.
-- Ben
[Note: Cross-posted to Spookybeans and Chapter 13 Press News] |
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| We're All Mad Here... |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|12:36 am] |
Introduction
I ran Don't Rest Your Head for the first time last week. In short, it rocks on toast (additionally, it is in fact All That and a bag of chips).
Apart from explaining the mechanics of the game to my players, it took maybe all of five minutes to create characters. The five questions are VERY nicely focused, and I love how the juxtaposition of the answers to two or more questions reveal interesting things about a character.
[Short System Note: We're using D10's instead of D6's, and counting 1-5 as success. So far, it seems to have little other impact on the game. The only other effect I can forsee is that there will be less of a chance of a tie when determining which pool is dominant in a conflict.]
Dramatis Personae
My Name Is: Rachel
And I Am: A Sophomore at FIT
What's Been Keeping You Awake? Fear of eternal loneliness.
What Just Happened to You? Just caught fiance cheating on her.
What's on the Surface? Independent, because she's slow to make friends, and doesn't care much for her family.
What Lies Beneath? Feels like she has no value to anyone.
What is Your Path? To get to a point where's she's taken care of and can stop worrying.
Exhaustion Talent: Champion Gymnast.
Madness Talent: Can pass Impassable Barriers.
Rachel broke off her engagement about a week ago, but she's had problems sleeping long before that. Since then, she's kind of thrown herself into her studies.
My Name Is: Mallory
And I Am: Nine Years Old
What's Been Keeping You Awake? Lots of bad dreams lately.
What Just Happened to You? Dad killed my dog.
What's on the Surface? He's buried in the back yard.
What Lies Beneath? Mom & Dad are probably going to get a divorce.
What is Your Path? I'm going to be a xenobiologist when I grow up.
Exhaustion Talent: I can disappear.
Madness Talent: I can talk to anyone.
Mallory would be right at home in a game of Little Fears. It says something that most of her answers are not about her, but her parents. As a child, much of her identity is defined by other people. Lately, she's been sneaking out at night to hang out with her friend Malik. She's also seen Aliens about 20 times.
Welcome to The Mad City
I started each of them off with something that was familiar before plunging them head first into the unknown.
Rachel is walking home from school when she discovers that the street where her apartment was has somehow vanished. It goes from 13th St directly to 11th. After wandering around for a while, she notices that the street signs are no longer written in English, and that her surroundings have taken on a bit of a grungy look, and there are no cars in sight. She stops at a sidewalk cafe for a cup of tea, meets a nice older gentleman who introduces himself as Thaddeus and almost immediately recognizes her frustration and confusion as the hallmarks of someone who has just arrived in the Mad City. Before he can assist further, they hear the deep tolling of a gong or large church bell, and what little foot traffic there is on the streets begins to scatter. Thaddeus warns her to get off the street before Officer Tock's men arrive. Rachel hears the rhythmic thudding of marching boots, and heads in the opposite direction. A woman opens a door and desperately beckons her in.
Mallory sneaks out of the house just before midnight, and rides her bike towards Malik's house, which is several blocks away. She is surprised to encounter a set of railroad tracks in the middle of a neighborhood where there should be none. After crossing them, she realizes that none of the houses are familiar. Everything looks run down, and she can't read the street signs. She tries to go back, but can't find her house. She heads for the nearest large street, and heads for a small convenience store on the corner, the only one that's open this time of night. Upon entering, she sees the man behind the counter in a heated discussion with a tall man in a long black coat. Mallory attempts to surreptitiously use the payphone nearby to call 911 (First roll of the night! Mallory rolls 3 Discipline and chooses to raise Exhaustion to 1. I set the roll at 4 Pain. Mallory rolls no successes, and that single Exhaustion die comes up 10, raising her Exhaustion to 2), but the Tall Man sees her and cuts off her call while she's talking to the dispatcher. They have a short conversation. Mallory asks why he is wearing sunglasses at night, and he explains that she wouldn't want to see his eyes. Mallory asks what's going on, the Tall Man explains that the store owner owes his employer quite a lot of money and has not paid up in the time agreed upon. He then sends Mallory outside and proceeds to smash up the store with a baseball bat. After he leaves, Mallory helps the shop owner, Mr. Raffiqi, clean up the broken glass. Mr. Raffiqi quickly deduces that Mallory has gotten lost, and agrees to help her find her way home.
The woman who has taken Rachel in is Linda, an older British woman, who offers her more tea. Linda attempts to explain a bit about what's happening, and once the streets are clear, she offers to take Rachel to see some people who might be able to help.
Rachel and Linda head across town to a restaurant, where they head straight to the back room. After knocking on the door and being identified, they are let in. There Rachel sees Thaddeus and a younger gentleman who introduces himself as Stephen, the de facto leader of the group. Mr. Raffiqi (whose first name apparently is Avi) and Mallory are there as well.
Stephen explains a little more about where they are, and that there has been considerable difficulty getting back to the City Slumbering for some time now. The cause for this remains a mystery. He also mentions some of the more dangerous elements in the Mad City: Officer Tock and his men, The Roof Rats, Mother When and her Ladies in Hating, and the Wax King (who is mentioned as the only one that can be reasoned with). Mallory mentions the Tall Man, and Stephen shudders.
We broke here, as I was pretty much out of material. As it was I was surprised to have been able to jump in head first without any prep to begin with.
Setting Concerns
I have made a few logistical changes to the Mad City. First of all, there is both day and night here, simply because there are some things that are even creepier in the daylight. Also, the way back to the City Slumbering is barred, at least for now. Finding out what's blocked most of the gateways will be part of the first story.
Other miscellaneous details I have added: Entrances to the Mad City take different forms. In Rachel's case, it had to do with the pattern she followed when she was wandering around trying to find her street. With Mallory, it was a case of very literally being on the wrong side of the tracks.
The easiest way to tell you've crossed over into the Mad City is that all writing becomes random symbols; street signs and posters are illegible. The locals don't seem to mind this, as signs seem to serve more as superfluous decoration than anything distinctly useful. So far, any writing a character brings with them (such as in Mallory's AvP comic book) remains normal. There are also no cars anywhere. No one knows why.
Also, mapping the Mad City is impossible. To get from one place to another, you need to know the Directions, which are based on landmarks. Once you have visited a place of particular importance you can use it as a landmark. So, to get from Point A to Point B, you might have to go 3 blocks north, then 2 blocks east, then 1 blocks south, then 3 blocks west, but that doesn't mean you can simply go 2 blocks north and 1 block west, because you'll end up somewhere else entirely. Fortunately, the more familiar you are with a place, the easier it will be to find it if you get lost. And of course, there's always the rooftops if you're in need of a shortcut...
Moving Forward
I've come up with the basics of the local power structure, and there's plenty of opportunity for contact, based on the PCs' own personal issues and whose attention they're likely to attract.
More to come after Dexcon.
-- Ben |
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| Damn... |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|04:56 pm] |
David Carradine was found dead in a hotel in Thailand.
-- Ben |
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| Damn you, Fox |
[May. 18th, 2009|03:33 pm] |
Fox has decided not to renew The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which makes me angry.
On the other hand, they've picked up Dollhouse for another season, which makes me happy.
-- Ben |
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| Left 4 Dead |
[May. 1st, 2009|01:50 pm] |
Valve has a 24 hour free trial thingy going on right now for the PC version of Left 4 Dead. I downloaded it and fired it up just after midnight last night.
I played 1 level - about 15 minutes - before I very abruptly quit out, went to the Steam website, and immediately plunked down my CC info to buy a copy.
The fact that they're selling it at 40% off until May 4th didn't hurt either.
In other news, I also picked up a copy of The Path, and an old Judge Dredd game.
-- Ben |
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| Duh... |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|04:31 pm] |
I bought an album by Blitzkid last week. Pretty decent horrorpunk stuff. I just realized that the lead singer is currently doing vocal work for Doyle's band Gorgeous Frankenstein.
-- Ben |
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| Post-ICON Report |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|12:07 pm] |
Went to ICON this past weekend. It could have been better. Then again, I suppose it could have been worse.
The Good
I got to hang out with some cool people that I only get to see once or twice a year. I played in a demo of Shadowfist (the Feng Shui CCG). I actually had money to spend at the dealers' room this year, so I picked up a copy of Mage: The Awakening, a t-shirt, and some nifty jade-colored dice for L5R. Nearly all the food was free (I did go out to McD's on Saturday morning).
The Bad
Scheduling was a nightmare. The con was spread across 2 hotels and the gymnasium at Suffolk County Community College. No one knew where things were being held. Shuttle buses were at least 1/2 hr apart (sometimes an hour apart). Security was non-existent (no one checked my badge the entire time I was there, as far as I know). None of my scheduled games happened, because there were no sign-up sheets for them. In addition, I didn't get to actually play any games other than the aforementioned Shadowfist demo. All of the games I was interested in were either shceduled for the same time as my games (and by the time it became apparent that my games weren't happening, it was too late to jump in on any of the others), or they were canceled for one reason or another (Jamie Chambers was set to run a demo of the Supernatural RPG late Friday night, but someone had also scheduled him for a panel first thing Saturday morning, so he had to choose). Most of my time was spent watching the RPG table, covering sign-up sheets, prize support, and the RPG library.
Oh, and someone yanked the fire alarm at 4am Sunday morning, and we had to evacuate the hotel.
-- Ben |
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| ICON 28 |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|09:18 am] |
As is traditional, Chapter 13 Press will be at ICON this year, and we will have a shiny new Spookybeans scenario!
Keepers of the Gateway
It written that there is a doorway, a portal between this world and the next, which stands closed. It is said that if this doorway is ever opened, then the Deep Old Ones will return, and plunge all the world into utter darkness and chaos. It is suspected that this may have already happened.
Once every 253 years, the energies of the universe align in just such a manner as to allow the opening of a gateway to another dimension. When this occurs, two groups will gather: Those who wish to open the door, and those who strive to keep it closed. The only problem is that no one knows who's on which side.
I will also be running Dave of the Dead, as well as my Trauma Team scenario for Cyberpunk 2020.
-- Ben |
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| Pass the mic... |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|09:03 am] |
Andy Hallett: 1975 - 2009
It can get a little depressing when people younger than you start dying from stuff that only people older than you should be dying of.
-- Ben |
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| This is the sound... |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|10:33 am] |
...of your childhood being raped.
That's what I used for the subject line in an email I sent my brother a couple of weeks ago when I forwarded him the link to the Land of the Lost trailer.
Now preview reports are trickling in to Ain't it Cool News, and it just gets worse and worse with every sentence. All the things that they're praising in the reviews are things that make the movie sound horrible to me. If it had been given any other name, I might have given it a chance.
I want to like Will Ferrell. I loved a fair bit of his stuff on SNL. Celebrity Jeopardy remains one of my favorite recurring sketches. His James Lipton is fantastic. I genuinely enjoyed Elf. I try to give the guy a fair chance. But I just haven't liked anything he's done in quite a lot time, with the notable exception of The Oblongs.
-- Ben |
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| Dollhouse |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|10:45 am] |
I really want to like this show. And not just because of some perceived Whedon-fanboy notion.
The main problem I have with the show is that I find it to be built on an extremely shaky premise. Someone else already brought it up in a review somewhere, but it bears repeating. If you find yourself in the middle of a kidnapping situation, are you going to contact a secret (illegal) organization who will program someone to be a negotiator... or are you simply going to hire a negotiator? Do you want someone who's been programmed to be a safecracker, or someone who's actually spent their lives cracking safes? It seems counter-intuitive and not really cost-effective.
That being said, once you accept the premise, everything else is golden. I especially love the almost ritualistic verbal cues, like when one of the actives has just been wiped, or when they showed Echo being imprinted for Boyd.
-- Ben |
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| Dreamtion Report, Part 2: Saturday |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|09:50 am] |
Saturday morning, I finally got to play Sorcerer! The scenario started with The Breakfast Club as its basis, so we were each playing one of the various 'archetypes' from the movie (I got to play The Basketcase). The twist is that our families had all been involved with sorcery for generations, and we were all half-demon, which gave each of us some nifty powers to work with. Anyway, we'd all been called in for detention on a Saturday morning for various reasons, but when the teacher showed up, she was being possessed by a demon who was out for revenge after apparently being betrayed by all our families about 90 years ago. Things degenerated pretty quickly, with one of us knifing the janitor very early on (it wasn't me), then taking off to try and find out how to deal with this demon. While we're running around, the other PCs each received photo messages on their cell phones of their parents being systematically ripped apart. At the end of the scenario, we'd figured out what the demon's weakness was and how to stop it, and the thing showed up in my character's mother's body. Now, we'd defined early on in the session how each of our characters got along with our families (or didn't, in my case). My character smiled, walked up to his mother and said "Mom, do you have any idea how many nights I lay awake, wishing, hoping, PRAYING that one day, you and Dad would sit me down and tell me I was adopted?!" Then I hit her with my character's Rot ability.
Saturday afternoon I ran my Cyberpunk game. This was without a doubt the absolute worst AV crew in Trauma Team history, which is pretty much the point of the scenario. Everyone playing was absolutely spot-on the whole time, and I was in serious danger of running out of the counters I was using for Style Points. Standard practice was to hoard them for the most part, then use all of them in one shot when it really counted. In the end, they blew up 2 meth labs (they'd sought out the second one simply because destroying the first one was so much fun).
In the early evening, I played Serial Homicide Unit, run by Kat Miller. We started with 'college students' as the profile, and each created characters that fit that. Each character had a goal they were working toward, and everyone but the character's player created various obstacles to that goal. My character was trying to get into Princeton for grad school, and among the obstacle the others had come up for me were a pregnant girlfriend and the fact that my character's father wanted him to go to Harvard instead. The game has 2 distinct phases which it switches back and forth between. First, each player has a scene with their character dealing with one of their obstacles, and the other players take on the roles of various NPCs. When the relevant conflict comes to a head, a die is rolled, and the outcome determines whether the rest of the scene plays out in the character's favor or not. After everyone's had a turn, it switches, and everyone plays members of a CSI unit. See, there's already one dead body (and more will be on the way if you don't work fast). Each person picks a role: Crime Scene Photographer, Profiler, Medical Examiner, etc, and each player rolls dice to see how many clues they can contribute to the ongoing investigation. One person plays the Lead Investigator, who doesn't roll dice, but gets to decide how to arrange the various clues into chains of evidence. There's less actual roleplaying going on in this phase, as the goal is to build up enough of a case to bring the killer to justice. If you don't have enough evidence, you go back to the first phase, and play another round of the potential victims. Oh yes, you see, the first body was a random person that happened to fit the profile, but now, every time you go back and play the detectives (someone else taking over the Lead Detective role each time), another one of the 'PCs', chosen at random, turns up dead. If your character gets killed, when you go back to the first phase, instead of playing out a scene of that character dealing with something, you play out a scene that highlights how their death affects the other people in their lives. Finally, you build up enough chains of evidence to bring the case to the DA, and the killer is stopped. Afterward, everyone votes to see whether the characters achieved their goals or not (possibly posthumously). Amazing little game, certainly non-traditional, and I would definitely want to play it again.
Finally, I ran Dave of the Dead at midnight. I used the new rules that Becky and I had worked on back in October, and I have to say everything went swimmingly. There are a couple of tweaks I'm going to be making (there were too many dice on the table, for one thing), but other than that, I think we're near a final version. They went for slow zombies again, and once again we had at least 2 characters that refused to believe that what they were facing were actually zombies. All in all, lots of running around, some zombie fighting, and the National Guard coming in at the end to torch the town.
Sunday writeup next time.
-- Ben |
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| Dreamtion Report, Part 1: Friday |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|10:00 am] |
Dreamation was a blast. Had tons of fun, played lots of games, learned some new things.
My first Spookybeans playtest on Friday afternoon didn't happen, because no one signed up for it. I ended up wandering a round for a bit, then heading into the where my game would have been, only to find that several people had in fact been waiting for me, but as 2:15 rolled around, they jumped into other games. I did likewise, and played in a sci-fi game called The Homeworld Project, which had some nifty mechanics that took me a little while to wrap my head around, but once I did, I was having lots of fun.
I played a game in Friday night called Last Meal, which was outstanding. The setup was that we were in the middle of a zombie outbreak, were all holed up somewhere that was ostensibly safe for the time being, but we'd just run out of food. The system was Andrew Morris' Unistat, not to be confused with Eden Studios' Unisystem (or Fear the Boot's Monostat, for that matter), and learning the rules was one huge wave of deja vu after another.
Apparently, Drew and I think a lot alike. Our GM styles are exceedingly similar, as were our design goals for our respective games, and as a result, there was a lot of parallel development going on. Unistat uses lots of dice, of all kinds. In fact, it's even less restrictive on what kinds of dice you can use, as it lets you use those funky d5's and d7's that Spookybeans shies away from. The character sheet consists of your name, and one thing that makes you cool (so it's basically 1/4 of the Spookybeans sheet). When rolling, you're actually looking for 2 pieces of information: the single highest # rolled (to determine success or failure), and the number of dice that came up odd (to determine who has narration rights). Whenever rolling dice, the dice rolled are exchanged at the end of the conflict. However, if your 'one thing' is relevant to the conflict, you get to keep your highest rolled die.
The scenario took place at a restaurant, owned by one of the PCs, with several of the others being employees there. I played the resident gun nut, who showed up to the party late after whatever other place I was at was finally overrun. There were some tense moments, first when someone got it into their heads that the owner was actually hiding food, then later when some of the group decided that they were going to make a break for it, and ended up letting some of the zombies into the place in the process. At some point, the PCs split up, leaving the NPCs in the restaurant. One group went off to find supplies in the neighboring buildings, and in the process discovered that the zombies were attracted to sound. Meanwhile, the rest of us made it into the steam tunnels under the town and found a government research lab, and learned that the zombies were part of a military science project gone horribly wrong (goddamn super-soldiers). Eventually there was a plan to escape to the docks and get away on one of the boats, but tragically, there was (intentionally) a lack of communication between the 2 groups of PCs, and I ended up leading all the zombies down to the lake, where it was discovered that zombies float. End result: TPK.
More Dreamation goodness soon.
-- Ben |
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| DREAMATION 2009 |
[Feb. 12th, 2009|04:23 pm] |
Here's the schedule (well, not all of it, just the bits that pertain to me, because I am the center of the universe):
R187: Spookybeans; "Going Out of Business" by Ben Morgan. The Euphorium, everyone's favorite one-stop shop for all things hippie/goth/punk since 1973, is being forced to close their doors if they can't come up with $50,000 in back rent. The store owners, Sunflower and her husband Smokey, have been friends with the locals in The Hollow for a long time, but people have been buying their music, clothes, games, and comics online in ever-increasing numbers, this small mom-and-pop store has found it difficult to complete. Chad Bradley (the Euphorium's landlord and all-around corporate dirtbag) sees this as an opportune time to kick out the hippies and tear down the store to build a franchised yuppie watering hole called "Mondays". Sunflower has three days to collect the cash or the store will be no more. Since the spookybeans are regulars in the shop, Sunflower asks them to help raise the money to stay open. Opposing the spookybeans are the Yuppie Youth Organization, a preppy right-wing high school club that torments our freaky kids on a day-to-day basis, and they will try and make it near impossible for them to raise any money by countering their efforts. The YYO is made up of all the preps, jocks, cheerleaders, and wanna-bes and rich kids at Ross Perot high school. Friday, 2:00PM - 6:00PM; One Round; All Materials Offered. Beginners Welcome; Fun, All Ages. See Also: R300.
R258: Cyberpunk 2020; "Heroes Are Hard to Find" by Ben Morgan. Spend a night with Trauma Team! TTI has partnered with GlobalComm to develop a new reality TV show called Medic: Emergency Response, which will put the viewers right there in the AV with the TT crews as they battle to save lives in the inner city. Saturday, 2:00PM - 6:00PM; One Round; All Materials Offered. Beginners Welcome; Very Serious, All Ages.
R282: Spookybeans; "Dave of the Dead" by Ben Morgan. Something has gone horribly horribly wrong, and now the dead have risen and are invading The Hollow with an insatiable hunger for the flesh of the living! Now, the future of humanity rests in the hands of a man with a borderline psychotic personality disorder. And a chainsaw. Can the PCs figure out what caused the outbreak, and how to stop it? Hell, can they just manage to survive? On the other hand, is being a zombie really so bad? Saturday, 12:00AM - 3:00AM; One Round; All Materials Offered. Beginners Welcome; Fun, All Ages.
R300: Spookybeans; "Going Out of Business". See R187. Sunday, 2:00PM - 5:00PM; One Round.
I will be ducking out around 10pm Friday night to head back to Manhattan to go to Contempt, a monthly goth club that kicks serious ass. All are welcome.
Other than that, I'm up for anything, so I will be getting into lots of indie game goodness.
To Fred, Brennan, Nathan, Tony, Jenn, Dregg, and everyone else that made Dexcon 2008 so awesome, I'll see you there. To Judd, Jeff, Storn, Jared, Luke, and everyone else who wasn't there at Dexcon, why not?!
-- Ben |
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