Trout Rain

I’ve been having more and more ideas for small role-playing games. Too many to develop. Too many to even think about really. Sometimes inspiration strikes and I end up writing 14 pages of a game and never really hashing out the idea. I have some seeds. Seeds that could grow into great plants

Salt and Light is a game about being the last religious zealots in an increasingly secular society. It’s an examination of faithful fundamentalism, hypocrisy and the wall of seperation between church and state. Players are rewarded for taking action that adheres to the tenets of a fake religion. It makes players answer tough questions about morality and ethics. Is something necessarily right simply because you believe it to be?

Powdered Orange Drink is a funny game about a group aboard an intergalactic spacecraft all of whom are annoyed with and sleeping with each other. Problems arrise on the ship and the players have to deal with it. The more you allow your bed buddies and personal bullshit get in the way of solving the problem, the more you are rewarded. The goal of the game is to laugh at your own character’s asinine behavior. If she would just ignore the nonsense and do the work, then the problem would be solved.

Fogo, Human Street Samurai

aspects: Chromed to the Gills, Surgical Grenadier, Unregistered Clone, Soulless, Rocksteady

Tambourine, Elf Ninja

aspects: Noiseless, Dangerously Pretty, Get In Get Out, Self-Starter, Too Many Contacts

Petrol, Ork Wheelman

aspects: Redline It Baby!, Quick On The Stick, Spray N Pray, No Softskin Can Keep Me Down!, Multiattentive

Osprey, Human Ops

aspects: Quartermaestra, Blackest Contacts, Put Together, Check Your Corners!, One Pistol’s More Than Enough

Countdown, Troll Phys Adept

aspects: Brick Shithouse, Wrecking Ball, Party Animal, Signature Style, Never Lived Under A Bridge

Jupiter, AI Matrix Support

aspects: Ghost In The Shell, 1337 skizzillz, ICEbreaker, Evolved Programming, “Living” Library

Last night a train split up Chico’s Critical Mass! We were lucky the train wasn’t too long. It only delayed us for about two minutes. The mass was probably a hundred riders deep, one of the biggest I’ve seen since I started riding a year ago. I makes me happy seeing so many people coming out and spreading bike love all over town.

Oh mans, I am so all about this new design. So clean. So crisp. Like a fresh shirt. Only instead of cotton, it’s made of code. The dramatic shift in design will change the way I handle this blog. I have too many interests to blog on just RPGs. I’ve been reading more comics, watching more movies and doing some funny drawings. I’ll throw the drawings up from time to time. I’m digging that flikr feed down the side there. Neat.

FedEx just dropped off my hard copy of the Mouse Guard RPG. It’s heavy, square, matte and full of awesome. I’ve spent the last month or so looking over the PDF, but I haven’t yet sunk my teeth into it. I like reading hard copy. PDFs are great for modules or other short PRG works, but I can’t sit down with my laptop and read 400 pages. Just ain’t happenin’.

A few pages in I came upon a passage that describes how to behave at the game table. This is amazing. I don’t own an RPG book that describes what playing at the table is actually like. Yeah, there’s the “example of play,” but I have never had a session that sounded like those read. Mouse Guard, in a few short paragraphs, tells the players to sit quiet when someone else is talking and to offer advice and encouragement when it’s not your spotlight scene. Shit, it even acknowledges right there on the page, that the whole game is not spent in character. TABLE CHATTER IS IN THE BOOK.

The advice in Mouse Guard is not something roleplayers don’t alread know and do. Yet, those things are a part everyone’s roleplaying experience. We sit around the tabel talking about rules, planning, hearing others’ ideas, laughing as they give a memorable performance. It’s part of the game. Now, a book plainly admits it. Embraces it.

Shaun and I sat down with the Dresden Files playtest material last night. It’s good. The fans of Dresden will be pleased for sure. It seems like every supernatural goodie ever mentioned in the books is present, in some way, in the RPG. Even if it’s just a couple paragraphs, it’s in there. Shit, even the Jade Court gets a plug.

The game has a variable power level, which is one of the things I dig about Fate. And, it’s not that fake sort of variation present in other generic systems. The power scale is inherent to the system. Almost every variable exists on the same “ladder.”

Desert Swords is finished and edited. I will finish formatting this week and post a link in the new store page.

Arcology is a big project, and I can’t commit the time it needs. I am considering whether to include extensive setting information, like Don’t Rest Your Head, or have setting creation be part of the game. I am leaning toward detailed setting. I like setting.

March of the Blood Ogres is a new science fiction game about an alien invasion. I had an urge to run Dogs in 9/12, then decided that I want to create a whole new system. There isn’t enough good science fiction out there, and Blood Ogres will be one step toward remedy.

Before the Crash, the Arcology was populated by the socioeconomic elite. Only the richest people in the nation could afford to live there. They were elitist and literally looked down on the people outside. Then the Crash came. The world outside the Arcology saw massive environmental, economic and political failure. Millions died. The survivors appealed to Arcology administration to provide them refuge. The administration caved. They allowed the outsiders to enter the Arcology and stay indefinitely. The Arcology citizens were outraged, but didn’t have the experience or knowledge to undo the administration’s decision. They sent letters of complaint and wore anti-refugee badges. Violence erupted occasionally at first, but the frequency increased over time. The administration formed a bi-partisan peacekeeping organization composed of citizens and refugees. They acted as police, detectives and emergency personnel.

The player-characters are members of the peacekeeping organization. Each player identifies her character with either the citizens or the refugees. The characters must reconcile their personal alignment with their peacekeeper’s code.

I made the switch. I no longer have Windows, in any variation, on any of my computers. I am running Hardy Heron on both my desktop and my notebook, and it looks like I am keeping that way. However, I will be installing Office 07. That program is the one thing Microsoft has done right in the past 5 years. It’s as if the people working on Office should have told the Vista people “ur doin it wrong.”

Before Office 07 was released, Open Office Writer was my word processor of choice. Writer looked like and behaved like Word. 07 upped the game. Aside from the live design and gorgeous new typefaces, 07 doesn’t functionally do anything that it’s previous versions didn’t. The UI gives the user easy access to the programs features. It doesn’t bury it all in layers of menus.

Installing Ubuntu was painless. Headache-free. Windows installs are long, laborious tasks. I spend most of the time reinstalling basic utility programs; like a media player that actually plays media, winrar, and firefox (with all the add-ons I need). Not to mention searching for up-to-date drivers. Ubuntu pretty much does everything on its own. I still have a sound problem, though. For some reason, it’s not recognizing my notebook’s front audio jacks.

Everything is coming together nicely. All the pieces of my computer are basically getting along with each other. The star-up was painless, and any trouble can easily be remidied with a quick check of the Ubuntu forums.

These are virtues I want in TROUTRAIN games. Easy to pick up and run. All the rules are on the page, ready to be played. A forum for players to share their game experience.