Simlasa

I read a copy of SOTC way back when it was the darling of RPG.net (maybe it still is)... and I can see that it's well written... a good read... had some good gaming advice. But it really left me cold... and a good chunk of it stands as a perfect example of what I DON'T want in my BRP games. I mean to avoid 'stunts' or whatever... and 'fate points' or whatever... and any other mechanisms to make the game 'cinematic'.

That being said, I'm sure it's the cat's pajamas to lots of other folks.

My first thought of reference, from the description, was Athas/Dark Sun... but somehow more 'Gothic'.

Lately I've had a real zen for post-apocalyptic fantasy settings... like Athas and Tribe 8... and on-the-cusp-of-apocalypse settings like WFRP.

Still not sure how interested I'd be in Ashes... but so far it sounds intriguing.

The new cover is a nice surprise to me... I really like it.

I liked the idea of the basic Chaosium logo cover... but I'm not sure it would mean as much to someone new to the game...

Hmmm... I thought he had been dead for years...

I can't say I've ever read anything by him... but still recognize the passing of greatness.

Good news... for lots of reasons.

One of our regular game settings has a huge area that is basically Athas with the serial numbers filed off... and minus some of the more obvious D&D critters.

Most of what we've played has revolved around the slave tribes and the Veiled Alliance.

A/State is in the top 3 of games I want to get a hold of... what I've read about it is certainly evocative and 'up my alley'...

No one in our group has it yet... I'm not sure if it would ever get much play... but I still want a copy, if only just for reading.

There's always been competition for the RPG audience...

The guys who initially got me into RPGs were all brothers in a family that didn't have a TV... they're parents wouldn't allow one in the house, so all the kids (there were 6 of em) were raised without it.

They were a fascinating bunch of guys... well read, creative, hilariously funny...

Then one day their parents broke down and bought a television.

I'm pretty sure they never played another RPG...

They certainly became a lot less interesting... since all the stuff they talked about was the same drivel 90% of the other kids were talking about.

As for games going out of print/companies going under... there is some comfort to be taken in knowing that once that happens the rules will NOT being seeing version X.umpity... will not be twisted into some unrecognizeable mess to capitalize on some current cultural trend... they won't become a CMG or have a set of online tools to supplement them... they'll just stay the same great rules you always loved... and play pretty much the same as long as you want them to.

Just as a matter of point... the 'magic motorboat in my pocket' statement wasn't a crack against the 'competing' group... since it was an item that featured prominently in the one game of theirs I ever attended. It's just an example of something our group would have shied away from.

It's interesting to me that I'll PLAY in just about any sort of game of just about any 'style'... but if I'm gonna be the GM I get much more narrow-minded...

Role-playing a Space Marine sounds really dull to me... maybe cause I picture them as drugged up religious fanatics who spend all their time fighting and praying.

The Rogue Trader/Inquisitor stuff seems much more interesting... or anything dealing with the common citizenry. I'd much rather deal with the intrigues of the Imperial nobles and glitterfolk... the hive-world gangs... the pirates and smugglers.

I'd rather have all the WH40K battle stuff as background that could occasionally creep into the game... running into a squad of Space Marines would be pretty scary... rather than try to find a storyline for marine characters who, IMHO, would have very little in the way of free will.

Fading Suns seems like a much more gameable (roleplayable) setting...

I've always wondered about mecha RPGs... they seem like they'd be so equipment/combat oriented that I'd wonder what the storylines would be like... they seem more suited to wargames to me...

Though I do see the attraction of playing something like Appleseed or Bubblegum Crisis... so...

As far back as I can remember there was bickering over how people were 'supposed' to roleplay.

I lucked out and was in a pretty solid group who were in happy agreement... low fantasy, gritty post apocalypse... not a lot of resurrections or magic items being handed out.

But there was another group we knew... member of whom visited our game... and completely hated it... they were much more of the 'magic motorboat in my pocket' variety of D&D players. There was quite a bit of enmity stirred up between our group and their just based on a couple of games they sat in on...

I've been re-reading some old (late 1800s) fantasy lately... the stuff by George MacDonald... Lilith & Phantastes... has my brain going... cobbling together a relatively adult fairy-world out of those, and MacDonald's other, stories.

But then, I've been wanting to do a fairy-tale/folklore game for a long while now...

I broke down and bought a copy off Amazon for half price... I figure it will make something of a reference for converting stuff into BRP terms at some point... and I've been waiting for such a book since the old Rogue Trader days.

Mostly hoping for more idea on Imperial life that doesn't revolve around enormous battles...

Everything H P Lovecraft ever wrote.......

Well... it certainly seems that way... until you actually read some of his stuff and notice that very few, if any, of his stories fit that mold.

The thing with the Mythos stories is, that once you've read a few... you start to anticipate the Mythos in all his stories... kind of a variation on 'the butler did it' syndrome in English mysteries... though how many actually feature muderous butlers (I suspect not many... but I wouldn't know).

Thats why I always thought it was important, in COC games, to toss in plenty of sessions where the Mythos played no part at all... and leave plenty of evil to good old human nature.

My friend went to a sneak preview of Cloverfield this week.

He enjoyed it a lot, said it's very brutal and realistic... not at all like a Godzilla movie (he said it is totally from the perspective of those anonymous people you see fleeing in those Toho movies...).

The monster may or may not be Lovecraftian... but it's NOT Cthulhu... there's no supernatural element except that the thing is impossibly huge.

He also said not to sit too close to the screen or you'll throw up... cause of the camera movement.

That was something my first CoC GM mentioned. He said that while characters did get shocked and shaken up, none of the heroes in a Lovecraft story everwent permanently insane.

The only one I can recall going obviously and permanently bonkers was the narrator from 'The Rats In The Walls'... the rest screamed and ran away... or got eaten.

Maybe not the best example. The Blair Witch Project wasn't scary to me because the plot was nonexistent and the sound wasn't clear. (Although I did see it in a theater full of chattering teenagers.) The only reason it was scary to initial audiences was that they thought it was an actual documentary until the actors came forward after the premiere.

Seems like it was real hit or miss with people... the guys I saw it with all knew it wasn't a 'real' documentary but we were all 'edge of our seats' anyway... I've only met a few gullible people who thought it was a 'true' story.

I'm pretty sure that it was, at least partially, inspired by Karl Edward Wagner's short story 'Sticks'.

(interestingly, the new giant monster movie Cloverfield is very much in the same style as Blair Witch... fake 'documentary' footage, shaky cam, etc... and people seem hit or miss on that one too).

Anyway... like I said, hit or miss... like a Lovecraft seems to be for a lot of people.

My high school American Lit teacher introduced me to Lovecraft's stuff... and I wrote papers on him in undergrad... it wasn't until later that I found the game.

What's 'special leather'?

I smell a little bit of bias here.

Yeah, I've definitely got bias... but that's the nature of the thread... so.

The only reason I jumped on that 'these things won't drive people insane' bit was because I've seen lots of people say that with regards to Lovecraft's writing and it kind of bugs me... I think a lot of it comes out of modern desires to see everything in a bright light and covered in gore (not saying that's your take, necessarily, it just seems to coincide with complaints I see about Lovecraft... 'well, Jack Ketchum is a REAL horror writer!'.

The same sorts of complaints that claim the Blair Witch Project isn't scary because they never show anything.

Besides, seems to me very few of Lovecraft's characters were driven insane anyway.

There was a 'Masque Of The Red Death' RPG?

What, like a game where you were at a party waiting for the plague to strike?

I think there is a big difference between seeing your buddies riped in two by machinegune fire and seeing froggy going through your garbage.

... and I wasn't really making the two out to be the same...

Just saying, watching war movies doesn't prepare you for war. Watching horror movie doesn't prepare you for monsters.

I worked in a forensics lab with all sorts of body parts and organs... that doesn't insure that I won't wig out if I come home to find my girlfriend's guts scattered on the kitchen floor. The element of surprise and danger plays a big part in how people react.

I agree that MOST people aren't necessarily going to come unhinged over such things... but everyone has a breaking point.

I kinda doubt there would be much Locvecraft stuff on the shelves now without CoC. Or that a lot of authors in the horror field considered him a major influence.

Well, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell mention him as an influence... definitely Thomas Ligotti... Clive Barker has several stories that have his airs about them... that's a pretty good starting line-up...

I really don't think COC has all that much to do with people knowing about Lovecraft and seeking out his books.

If I ask a random group of folks... lots more of them are going to have heard of Lovecraft than have heard of COC or Chaosium.

Most of the really bad fantasy I've read I can't name... cause I didn't finish it or keep the book.

A lot of it was attempting to out-Tolkien Tolkien... and instead read like someones record of their RPG sessions.

The idea of seeing something that breaks your mind because it is so different was fine in the 1920s when new theories such as Relativity, Quantum Theory and the Expansion of the Universe were changing how people thought about the world and shattered what people thought about how things worked. But, nowadays with films and TV Shows, we see aliens left, right and centre, we have graphic horror films that leave nothing to the imagination and we have been desensitised to a lot of things. So, seeing some half-fish creature isn't going to break my mind and send me to the loony bin.

I've seen lots of people say this and I still think it's a load of crap.

Soldiers come home all the time mentally unhinged because of what they've experienced at war. They see things that are completely outside of normal experience and I really doubt watching several hours of war movies before setting out would have spared them.

Seeing a rubber/cgi monster on some SciFi Channel crapfest is NOT going to put your mind at ease when you come across a deep one rooting through your garbage at 3am. Maybe you won't go insane... but it will sure as hell shake you up.

Lovecraft's style isn't to everyone's taste, no... but then neither is Henry James or Stephen King or JK Rowling or James Joyce. I was talking to a high school kid the other day who was complaining how 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is complete garbage...

So by those loose guidelines it's ALL bad in somebody's opinion.

Whatever, there's a reason Lovecraft keeps getting republished... and people keep imitating him.

I kinda doubt there's gonna be a lot of JK Rowling stuff on the shelves 80 years from now.

I never said that it has to be a grand story. THat is an misconception. It you look at a book, TV show or film around non heroric characters the same rules apply for the most part.

I'm thinking of the recent film 'No Country For Old Men'... not a story with 'heroes', not a story that unfolds according to a 'heroic' scheme... mostly because of the focus. A few of the 'protagonists' die in that in ways that would seem to throw the story off kilter... but doesn't... unless you are locked into it being a certain sort of story... traditional, heroic... something.

If the characters die off too fast, you can't accomplish much of anything.

Well, I've never played in a game that had people being fed into a wood chipper one after another... the presence of real and present danger usually serves to make them act cautiously... which tends to reduce the likelihood of them dying in droves.

The overarching care is certainly there. It's called the GM. THe Gm's priamry job is to priovide challenges for the PCs to attempt to overcome (and to usually be successful in doing so). Adsvenutres are tailored towards the abilities of the characters.

Of course, but in the sense of it being 'literature' the GM doesn't (usually) try to guide the PCs along a carefully crafted dramatic storyline he/she has worked out... instead the story unfolds according to the actions/choices of the characters... both success and failure.

Some games, like COC, might require more upfront structure... to carry off that onion-skin of mystery... but from what I've seen/played... there is usually more than one solution and any particular failure may be a setback but nothing than can 'ruin' the game.

Especially with horror games... a total party kill and triumph of evil might very well be the correct outcome to capture the spirit of the genre.

RPGs are not about win or lose they are about playing a role. Thats acting and that means a story. Maybe a partially free form story, but a story nonetheless.

That's generally how I like to play, but I think a LOT of people play them in more of a 'win or lose' sort of way... more like a wargame... or a video game.

Even COC... much as I love it, is often less about character development and more about stopping the cultists... a definite win or lose situation.

But like I said... a story is going to come out of it, one way or another... failure is just as much a story as success is.

There there is the problem of intergrating new characters into the old party. Changes in the balance of power that the GM needs to account for. It is really for the best if the PCs don't get killed.

A new character can always be started with extra points/abilities if balance is really that big of a concern.

That said. I consider the responsibility to avoid death to rest mostly on the shoulders of the players. If someone wants to hit the dragon tho "see what will happen" I don't have any sympathy for him,. Lots for the six other people who will probably get caught in the fray, but not for the stupid guy.

Total agreement there... though if the guy has obviously been stupid up to that point I'd have to question why they continued to be around him... standing next to 'stupid' could be seen as a stupid action unto itself.

There are lots of real life consequences to hanging out with stupid, violent people.

But really all of the narrative stuff is there, just under the guise of the GM.

I'd agree... but 'narrative' of an RPG sort... not necessarily literature or film or video game... if I want to have great dramatic story with tight plotting and well defined characters I'll read a book... watch a film. If I want lots of cool action I'll play a video game...

An RPG should be able to exist as it's own form... without trying to reign in the conventions of some other medium. (I realize that's not what you were saying, I'm must babbling)

Really, I'm just trying to say that games that allow for character death, even absurd character death... are not better or worse than the purely cinematic kind where the hero is defined from the first and is obviously going to come to no real harm.

It's a matter of taste.

BRP allows for both sorts, and all shades in between... and I'm happy about that.

If I wanna play a Lensman game I can... if I want to play something nihilistic and deadly... I can do that too.

RPGs have a lot in common with fiction.

If you WANT them to... otherwise no, they don't.

Not everyone plays RPGs to tell a 'story'... a lot of people play them for the immersive experience of being in a different place or time... sure, there's still a story to tell when you look back on it, but it's being written as it moves along without the overarching authorial care that goes into a written novel.

The hero, if there is one, might not be apparent until the end of the tale.

This whole idea of a roleplaying campaign telling some grand story with epic heros and memorable characterization is just one approach to it. It's not inherent to the game, it's a matter of taste.

That being said I've played in games that did all those things and had loads of fun... but to say a game group is in any way 'less' if it doesn't aim to carry that off... meh, I don't agree.