Simlasa

Tonight I watched a bunch of episodes of the 'War Of The Worlds' tv series from the late 80s... and now I'm all jazzed about trying to game something along those lines...

It's pretty wild stuff, especially the second season... kind of a post-apocalyptic setting with alien invaders, who... though advanced in a lot of ways... still have a lot of limitations that keep them from being able to take over outright.

So far I've counted 3 different kinds of aliens (one being a huge, floating, tentacled thing with one big eye)... various weird 'constructs' and forms of possession, cloning, mind control... odd weapons... strange plagues... interplanetary/interdimensional gateways... grotesque 'biotechnology'... secret underground government labs... vehicular combat... punk rock bands... street riots... false messiahs... unnatural pregnancies...

If some zombies show up in the remaining episodes then it will be a pig-perfect setting for me and mine... otherwise I'll do it anyway and add the zombies myself.

I haven't used them, and never liked them... but I've heard/read of people using them in ways that were 'in story'... such as saying they represent a tremendous effort and applying them PRE-ROLL to actions the character would think were particularly important... more like 'betting' on the stuff you care about ahead of time rather then waiting till you mess up.

That always sounded kind of reasonable to me... and I've considered trying such things (but haven't yet).

I REALLY dislike the idea of re-rolling or any other sort of revisionist actions though... so even if I were to try using them I'd never use them to allow roll-overs. To me it disrupts the flow of the story...

'You swing at the goblin and miss'

'No I don't, I use a fate point'

'Ok... you hit the goblin'

etc.

Luckily none of the guys I play with seem all that keen on them either...

One of the guys, when he GMs, runs WFRP... and we have them in there but for whatever reason they don't come out much... maybe because it seems to fit the setting to fail/die in lots of horrible and ridiculous ways.

All that being said, and as we established on these forums a while back... neither I nor most anyone else seems to have a problem with them being in the BRP book... AS AN OPTION.

Moorcock's fantasy stuff often gets labeled as 'sword and sorcery' and, to me, the Melnibonians were always pretty much elves by a different name (and a, slightly, nastier disposition).

So yeah, I can see them in an S&S setting...

Dwarves are harder for me... I loathe most fantasy depictions of dwarves...

in fact I can't think of any I like.

Maybe make them a degenerate, lean, albino race of subterranean burrowers... who only go above ground by night... who have some really atrocious/nauseating habits... yeah, I could go for those in S&S too... kind of like the Morlocks out of 'The Time Machine' or Lovecrafts 'ghouls'.

what's 'Arcanum'?

(I'm sure I could look it up, but I'm also curious why you like it Badcat).

You're saying Worlds Of Wonder came with cards like that?

I don't remember that, I'll have to have a look at mine...

Like I said... my hatred of Hobo is because I've been inordinately sensitized to such things...

In my mind Hobo is the font of choice of people who don't know better... it's poorly balanced... it doesn't flow... it's a bad font.

I don't really expect anyone else to care and it's REALLY not important... unless the people you are selling to also have that opinion.

What IS important is that the book exists and looks legible and has nice graphics and a table of contents and is chock full of goodness...

yeah, I forgot Gamma World... my first RPG lovefest... such good times with that game.

Film noir

pulp detective stories

Moorcock

Lovecraft

Arduin Grimoire

The Post Brothers

The Brothers Quay

Kafka

Yes, amidst my bitching about the font I neglected to say 'thank you' for posting those images... much appreciated.

I probably wouldn't even notice the font if I hadn't once done a spell as a graphic artist and picked up a 'refined' taste for lettering... and constantly having to steer people clear of stuff like Hobo and Helvetica...

I like the idea of a 'revised Worlds Beyond'... though to update it I think it would need some sort of 'hook'. Some overtly distinctive flavor to pull interest.

I really like his horror fiction... he's got some great stuff that centers on The King In Yellow... kinda reminds me of Thomas Ligotti... or vica versa.

Wasn't KEW a doctor? I thought I'd read that somewhere...

Oh, and what characterizes 'pulpy combat'? Just curious...

Cool to see that it exists!

The layout and illustrations look sane and practical... don't impede the read.

They're still using that gawdawful font though (I think Hobo is one name it goes by...)...

I hope it doesn't end up on the cover...

I think BRP would do a good job of supporting a more grim and gritty or street-level superheros, and that could be pretty cool.

And that's the kind of superhero game I'd want to play.

I agree that punches could stand to be less lethal... even though, as a high schooler, I attended the court trial of a man who killed a guy in a bar fight with a punch to the neck.

I like fmitchell's ideas... a book with guidelines for creating creatures and their habits/ecologies... with maybe a sample beastiary... would probably be the most use to me... and the most inspirational for ideas.

A big book of random fantasy monsters not so much... though it might be fun to look at I probably wouldn't use many of them.

Most of the fantasy settings I've made up have tended to really veer towards being low-tech science fiction settings with some supernatural elements tossed in... meaning the creatures shared common morphologies scattered across various niches, rather than just being randomly dispersed and not at all similar to each other.

I don't know how relevant it is but...

The old Whispering Vault game sometimes gets described as being an odd sort of superhero game...

In the game the heroes each had powers and alliances that could help with the overall goal... but there were also powers that only functioned for the group as a whole... some of those were automatic... others required active participation to pull off. There was also something of a building up of group experience... as they worked together, and got to know each other better, new powers for the group became available.

I don't know that I've seen that sort of thing in other games... or maybe it's common and I just keep missing it.

RQ also suffers a bit becuase of it's SCA roots, too. In some ways it is combat by and for "weekend warriors" rather than by skilled combatants.

In what ways specifically?

Just curious... not arguing...

I like to escape reality too... but I tend to go for darker settings... maybe because they make me feel better about the reality I'm gonna come home to afterward.

Godlike and Wild Talents (the modern day version of the setting) have loads of interesting ideas in them... I'm not in love with the ORE system but I think a lot of the stuff is easily borrowed for other superhero games... the guys in these games aren't immortal or ultra-uber powerful.

About SOTC and game love:

I've done the same with BRP... believing it can do whatever I want to try.

Maybe any system can do that sort of thing if you grok it well enough and are comfortable with tinkering.

I've got a lot of different rulebooks but I'm inclined to find the one that works for me and stick with it... rather than hopping around.

I'm not yet of the camp that loves the rules to reinforce the genre... I guess I'm a 'dirty simulationist'...

No... in the 'real' world it seems like it was more like the prestige/powers of the hight priests that rose and fell with the numbers of devout followers... the gods themselves seem equally and consistently inert.

It hadn't occurred to me before, but Doc Savage must have been the inspiration for Buckaroo Banzai... brain surgeon, inventor, man about town.

The guys I game with have wanted to play a superhero game for a while... but we keep going round and round with what we want. We all seem to have different power levels as our ideal.

Another thing I'd like to try is a BRP version of The Whispering Vault... which sometimes is described as a something like a superhero game... 'Clive Barker's Superfriends' I think the line is... I don't think Vault's powers are so extreme though that they'd 'break' the system... they're just odd. It'd probably be a good fit for COC with some stuff from Superworld.

Yeah, I've kinda got a chip on my shoulder about SOTC... mainly because of the ravers on RPG.net... who think it can do anything and everything better than anything else.

You're right about The Shadow... I was thinking of him... and a lot of the 'lesser powered' heroes... like The Spider and The Avenger.

I don't think heroes like that would overpower BRP...

'Pulp' is a pretty open description... not really a genre or a style, though some people nowadays assume it to mean a high-flying, gonzo, kitchen sink of tomfoolery...

If I wanted to play cinematic games Spirit Of The Century seems to be the darling-boy for that right now over on RPG.net...

But some folks (like me) don't like cinematics...

I don't want 4 color superhero games but do like the idea of gritty games centered on vigilantes with odd powers... some of them might wear spandex but that won't keep them from being turned into pulp.

BRP seems well suited to that sort of thing.

I'm picturing some meta-game campaign system that charts the gains/losses in support for the various gods... and distributes power accordingly...

"Zeus used to show up all blood and thunder... and throw lightning bolts... but now that everyone has switched to Zoroastrianism you only see him once in a while... his toga is dirty and all he does is try to grope the farmer's geese."

That would be interesting in a game setting... having the one or more 'official' religions that no one really believed anymore but everyone gave lipservice too... offset against another one that had a growing cult of true-believers.

For most of the fantasy games I've played in the religions were pretty much equally powerful and equally correct... meaning all the gods could grant spells/powers... or even show up in person from time to time...

I think the thing about creatures being real/not real... is part of the mystery that's enchanting about playing in lower tech settings... not naming the creature that is seen but merely describing it and letting the players/characters come to all the wrong assumptions... either mistaking a vagrant for bigfoot or believing the sphinx at the gate is only a statue... oops!

I was never much into mainstream superhero comics... but I've been a fan of plenty of superhero characters... like The Shadow and Doc Savage and the Green Hornet...

I've had a campaign idea for a while about a city with a collapsed infrastructure (based on parts of Detroit I've been to) that is full of pulp era vigilantes jockeying for power. Some have 'powerz' but none of them are close to the ridiculous extremes of Superman/Thor/Green Lantern... they team up into loose gangs... good vs. evil is relative to outlook... kind of a gangland setting with powers tossed in.

Regarding the powers the superhero comics seemed to have cinematic logic that altered the character's powers depending on the need of the story... in ways that wouldn't transfer in solidly quantifiable ways to any game system.

But I've been really interested in 'grittier' storylines and systems like Godlike and Wild Talents and some of the 'pulp' systems. Taking real world physics into account somewhat and making the heroes a lot more three dimensional as well... they can kill or be killed... can dwell in the gray areas.