Ian Absentia

More conspiracy-theory-as-entertainment. It was getting old by the end of the '90s, and it's poisoned the well of social discourse. Along with zombie apocalypses, it's past time to move on. !I!

Let me tell you about my character... Set a while later than the planned campaign mentioned in the OP, I drew up a Sartarite horseman and played him very much like an Old West frontier cowboy/rustler, with a lance and lasso. The backstory was that, as a head-strong teen, he took his community's ethos a little too far and regularly antagonised both the Grazelanders to the west and the Lunar Tarshites to the north, to the point where his own clan had to outlaw him just to appease the neighbors. Given the time period (c.1615-21), it was only natural that he drift into "lawless" Prax and took his cowboy-style adventuring to a pitch, playing the good-hearted but cynical drifter. He eventually did a stint with Duke Raus in the Borderlands campaign (he saved Jezra!...then broke her heart), then moved south to form a band of raiders, rustlers, and thieves in the Zola Fel valley. Later, when playing in a new RQG campaign, I updated him to the new rules and added experience, and played his homecoming to Sartar where he'd mellowed a bit and became an up-and-coming thane of the clan. When last sighted, he was riding the clan range like an itinerant sheriff and putting the experience of his mis-spent youth to good use. Point being, he was always an outlaw, but never a really bad guy. Some of his fellow outlaws were worse, but never depraved. And he always had an eye on an eventual homecoming. !i!

How was the loudness? Zimmer's score has struck me as a little overwhelming at times. A friend saw the premiere at the New York Film Festival and said it was sometimes so loud that the dialogue was inaudible. But he added that the director was commenting on his pleasure with the sound system at Lincoln Center, and it's entirely possible that they cranked the volume to show off. !i!

All of this. Blood Tide is the only game book from any publisher that has made me actually angry. This may have been what pushed me past disappointment and into anger. It needed a clear mission statement, either historical piracy on the high seas or historical horror in the Caribbean. In a perfect world, it might have been a good historical supplement to P&G. !i!

Let's not overlook the role of entertainment news media, and their vested interest in generating sensation and outrage. There is no Left or Right in consumer mass media, only audience demographics. That applies to algorithm-targeted, echo chamber online media at least as much so. !i!

This is essentially the game I was hoping to see in the pages of the misbegotten Blood Tide. It's a pity those dots couldn't have been connected. !i!

In the Red-Shift Timeline, Frank Stafford's RuneQuest emerged as the pre-eminent RPG of the '70s, prompting Ernie G. Gygax toward more nimble innovations in his Midwest-indie Dungeons & Dragons as an alternative to the West Coast dominance of the fledgling RPG market. !i!

Sadly, this sin of leaning into "secret" history lies at the heart of a lot of gaming since the '90s (and television and movies and literature). It's practically a foundation of the entertainment industry, and it's given rise to some genuinely uncomfortable real life consequences. The sin is also baked into the thesis of Call of Cthulhu, from its literary source material to actual game play. There's a long-standing tendency to view "Fortean" events, non-Western, non-contemporary, non-mainstream religion, spiritualism, and culture through the Mythos lens. !i!

I don't think it is valid, but I also think it's a topic for another thread, and one that's been done many times over: The Western Cult of Individuality and Why I Really Want to Play a Different Game That's Actually About Me. The only workaround that's ever been necessary is to simply ignore p.83 entirely. The Major Arcana encompass every incarnation model that's ever been discussed or argued, including (ho-hum) the Awakened Human that we find in every other game of the contemporary occult. Me? I want to play a game about the annihilation of the Self and the Chymical Wedding of lower and higher natures, not Past Life Pokémon to fuel the Super-Self (talk about "predatory"). But, ignore p.83 and they're both in that book, along with a bunch of other cool takes. People have been totally overlooking incarnation in aquatic megafauna. Or incarnation in androids to explore the Macrocosm, or in AIs to explore the Microcosm. That said, I don't don't get the impression that that's what Nephilim Legende has in store. !i!

That was, more or less, always the approach of the French editions -- I gather this is no different. But you've more or less front-loaded your disappointment by airing that old complaint. Have a look at Andrew Montgomery's somewhat revisionist, but spiritually correct approach to the Nephilim's dualistic nature: !i!

It's worth noting that the stat for DEX is based on a 2d6 roll, not 3d6, and generally ranges from 1 to 15 for humans. If you're familiar with Traveller or the Cepheus Engine, then you know the scale. Retooling the AP economy for a 1 to 21 range would take a little jiggering for consistency. Expletive was one of my favorite (non-)actions in Snapshot. The example from the rules described having arrived at a lift door with APs left over, but waiting for it to arrive. !i!

How long ago was this? Was this a recent game? Looking into the Wayback Machine, this sounds a lot like GDW's Snapshot, as well as the other games mentioned above. Definitely not BRP/d100-based, but it's an idea that could be adapted pretty easily. !i!

Ah, the mysteries behind that feud, and the ascension of the All-Barntar who reaps as he sows. !i!

The Family Tree is more of an anastomosing channel. Steve was doing different things with different people at the time, but his omission is odd. !i!

Yes, I approve! And I backed it. Hoping it meets its modest funding goals. I'm all for a game that works with the more incomprehensible aspects of the Mythos and against the traditional portrayal that they're inherently evil. !i!

You'd think so, right? A Dilettante can be "Any/All of the Above" plus money, generally. !i!

But if it wasn't before, it is now! !i! [Seriously, though, maybe you should edit something that might amount to damaging rumor and speculation?]

Start a new one as needed. Link to the old one for reference. !i!

And Sunshine was directed by Danny Boyle, with a pretty amazing cast. It's good, thoughtful sci-fi, and I recommend it. !i!

For inspiration, you might start by looking where worlds collided: https://www.pensee.com/dunham/pdp.html PenDragonPass is going the other direction, though -- adding RQ to Pendragon -- so YMMV. !i!

Not at all. Now, don't crush that Mostali, hand me the pliers. !i!

As others have pointed out, it's clear that you don't, but you can if you try. Your statement appears to be committed to rejecting an understanding, though, and rallying others to your opinion. At least stop doing that. !i!

To this day, I marvel at that gaping hole of negative space in the middle of the cover of the first D&D Monster Manual. By the way, though it featured Tunnels & Trolls stats and was technically a game unto itself, where did Flying Buffalo's Monsters! Monsters! fit into the timeline? !i!

Just this week I finally caught up on the last several seasons of The Venture Bros. and was mildly astonished to see a heroquest in the last episode of Season 7 (S7E10, The Saphrax Protocol). The Monarch and Henchman 21 are initiated into the higher ranks of The Guild of Calamitous Intent in an elaborate ceremony where they're walked through recitations of the stations of Guild history and they ceremonially act out the events. What we see is the mundane side of things, but it struck me that this is what an outsider would see of a community enacting a heroquest ritual. !i!