We all like lots of things. We all have so little time on this blue-green ball.
So this book should be published:
100 weird fantasy one-shot or mini-campaigns in different worlds. With good pictures and rules-variations for each, written so you can start with any Old School system, modify it slightly and run it for a bit--then go back to your endless D&D campaign or your life, whichever of those you currently have.
Each is like 2-4 pages long, with everything you need to get it going, at least for a few sessions
Here's what I have so far*:
-The Field of Cloth and Chaos
It's an old-fashioned Arthurian jousting-and-melee tournament but every knight is a mutant champion of some weird god. Mutation rules, cool armor and weird mount options. Riding vortex zebras in bone-plate. Gambling, intrigue, death.
-You’re Eating Maggots
It's the 30 years war but you're all vampires going to negotiate with this other group of fancier vampires. Paris, Vienna, Budapest. Lace. Rapiers. Subspecies rules. Blood drugs. Actual 30 Years War politics.
-The Kaiju Must Die
Modern-era. One GM, one player plays the kaiju, the other players all play important PCs trying to stop the kaiju: scientist, reporter, general, alien invader, etc. If a non-kaiju dies they're immediately replaced with another person in another position and it keeps going til the kaiju is dead or has destroyed the city. Kaiju generator rules, city map with destruction mechanics.
-Veteran of the Psychic Wars
A vast post-apocalyptic Moebius desert and you are mutants roaming the plains feeding on psychic energy and using martial arts with sticks wearing cool jumpsuits. Scavenging, weird items, psionic rules, telepathic psychedelic sarlacc monsters.
-The PVP Maze Game that Everybody Liked
This is what I used to run at conventions when too many people wanted to play. Basically there's two teams of regular 1st level fantasy PCs and a randomly generated index-card maze between them. It's usually the most fun in the world. Index card templates, items, traps, rules for pvp, simplified chargen.
-Iron Horse
Inexplicably wild-west-themed future with robot horses, cyborg bounty hunters, alien gunsmiths. You must bring in 3 outlaws, each weirder than the last, dead or alive. Lots of gun lore, horse "breed" hairsplitting, minor mutations and prosthetics.
-Short-Lived New Flesh
Mechs but old school so there's Evangelion-esque body horror and sanity mechanics. Everyone is mentally and physically attuned to their mech. Also hit-location and partial damage rules so you are like hitting the other guy over the head with your own severed particle-cannon-beam arm while they try to cut through your armor with a giant sawblade. Awesome mech-building rules.
-Undermanned, Outgunned
You are pirates on a 17th century pirate ship. Things have gone poorly and you are low on supplies, powder, food, freshwater and everything else. Luckily(?) there are 4 ships in the area, including a merchant vessel, a warship, and two rival pirate ships. There's also a small island fortress. To survive you'll need to raid what you need from these sources--the order will matter, so this first then that's easier, etc. Ship combat rules, more detailed ship info than standard, etc.
-Rogue Traitors
This is just like Undermanned, Outgunned but you're space pirates. I will draw cool space pirates.
-Hunt The Black Riders
Ok the black riders in the 160th-17th century were basically like knights in full plate carrying pistols--several pistols because they didn't have 6-shooters then. This is a historical fact. There's a whole cavalry unit of them coming to reinforce the enemy. Your PCs have to stop them. Nice, detailed map of the area and the battle, details on the forces and timetables.
-Defenestrator
It's still the 30 Years War but this time it's player-vs-player. Every player is a different country and has access to 1 of 3 PCs at a time--an assassin, a diplomat, and a spy. You all have separate hidden goals during a peace conference. Fog-of-war rules, some maps, a few scenes ready-to-go with powder-kegs strewn liberally around.
-Cobalt Reach
Heavy metal magazine sci-fantasy. Lasers, blue dragons breathing lightning, jungle mutants, Bakshi. Like this.
-Scheherezade
Arabian Nights style PCs rescue a princess from a spooky palace in the desert. A really nice little enchanted dungeon with magic teleportation pools, long shadows, alabaster columns. Then when you rescue her the roles all change and so does the dungeon--next week a different player is the GM and everything's in a different place.
-Cannibalworld Cannonball
It's a post-apocalyptic car future and you are in a race across the United States. Build a car like you build a PC, and there's tables and maps for procedurally generating your route and what you find along the way from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. If the Dennys staffed by kitchen androids hasn't been sacked by mutant coyotes yet you might find food, and if that last explosion wasn't the pump you might find gas! Also of course all the other drivers know they will win if they kill you and that's not against the rules.
-Leopard Society
Post-apocalyptic subsaharan African plain with motorcycles and wild animals.
-Ultramassive and Unexplained
Tables for generating explorable planets, derelict ships and other big dumb sci-fi objects and the PCs who go see what's up on them. Probably compatible with the other sci-fi PC ideas in the book.
-The Avant Guard
It's World War I and are you on the front lines? No you are not. You are working for the secret service using your subtle but fascinating secret abilities to investigate and disrupt the enemy's use of bizarre new art techniques to undermine freedom worldwide. Paintings that ensnare innocent souls, sculptures that warp space and time, works of theatre none can behold and live! Only the mediums, spoon-benders and psychonauts of the Avant Guard can defeat such perils!
-Red and Pleasant War
One of you is the Red King, another is Countess Elizabeth Bathyscape, your weird vampire armies head to battle tonight. A skirmish wargame with army list rules for all the Red and Pleasant creatures, playable with chess pieces and playing cards.
-Warlords of Carcosa
Like that but Carcosa. Your army will probably includes some robots and some horrible summoned thing. Including a battlemap with strontium lakes and a mobile magnetic storm.
-City-States of the Beast Coast
A wargame with these guys.
-The Stars My Lamentation
Sword-and-Planet swashbuckling with ships of null-gravity oak and solarsilk sails. Same classes, basically, but rules for shipbuilding and airless, low-gravity combat.
-Kill The First Giant
Frazetta barbarians and maybe a sorcerer or two in mythic times have to go and kill the first giant to ever be born. What is its weakness? What exists on primeval earth that can even kill it? What dangers will you meet on the way? Depends what you roll on the charts!
-Once Upon A Time In Hell
A very contained, very stylized Weird West, utterly devoid of any rootin' or tootin'. Like if Cormac McCarthy let Lovecraft write a couple chapters of Blood Meridian after watching Dead Man. Character generation alternating chance and choice producing interestingly varied PCs including home state, Civil War service and rank (if any), specialty, scars, psychic trauma, liquor preference.
-Fuck That Game Mothership, People On That Game Lied About Rape
Ordinary people go to space and what they find is death and horror and the uncanny. But instead of being made by a bunch of people who wrote fan letters for years to the guy who wrote Vornheim then tried to frame him for a felony it's just written by the guy who wrote Vornheim. And drawn by him.
-Mad Mex
You play ad men selling mechs to both sides in a post-apocalyptic Mexican border war. Is your duplicity discovered and you must desperately flee for your life through the dust and fading sun of blood-colored afternoon alleyways? Of course, señor.
-The Worst Of All Possible Worlds
Nazi-occupied Neu York, modern day. Because the Japanese invented mechs. It's a street-level superhero game and you're freedom fighters. Like this. Rules for superhero powers bolted-on to old-school mechanics, nice map of occupied Manhattan, stats for the Weremacht et al.
-Are You Not Entertained?
Gladiator setting. Detailed personal combat rules with a kinda rock-paper-scissors system where you choose block, parry, dodge, feint, strike, etc to make small-scale fights long and interesting.
-Winter in the Abbey
A simple premise: a knight or two, a cleric, some thief, and a few sanity mechanics in a very gritty and very low-magic world are asked by the prior to investigate something. Something has gone awry in the abbey. And it is cold and quiet and uncertain and then it is the most mindbending horror. But let's do it exactly right this time. Exactly right.
-Biomechanecrozone
Dungeongcrawling through an absolute wall-to-wall Gigercube. A catalogue of Gigerthings you find on the blacksilver Gigerwalls, stalactating from the Gigerceilings, reaching up from the Gigerfloors and dripping from the Gigerarches.
-Stingraiders
You are sea-elves with ragged dark eyes. You seek submerged secrets in wrecks and the drowned results of sunken civilizations the deep dodging seademons and sharkmen. All kinds of details to make the politics and complexities of underwater society and geography interesting instead of just like not that interesting like it usually is.
-Operation Hourglass
All the players are multiclass wizard-thieves or wizard-thief-fighters and work together as usual but, despite being able to communicate are all in different eras. They are all spies in different wars at different times working together to prevent some chronomantic catastrophe. One is in World War 2, one is in the Napoleonic Wars one is in the 30 Years War, etc. They need to make sure certain things happen at certain times. Quietly. A very specific scenario with relevant maps, timetables and NPCs.
-I Want My Scalps
It's a few hundred years ago. You are Jews. The pope is a dick. You're going to kill him. Everybody plays a thief/rogue/specialist and you need to make a plan.
-The Time of Jewelled Tusks
You control a small army. Skirmish strategy set in medieval India with Lots. Of. War. Elephants. Also magic--and maybe a tiger or two. From the subcontinent that brought you chess.
-The Future Is Not Yet Written
Ok, so:
1. You take the players' current normal-game PCs.
2. You posit them as 20th-level PCs.
3. You send them on what their Last Quest might theoretically be.
Several suggestions for the apocalyptic foe, stakes, and battleground upon which this Dark-Knight-Returns-esque conflict might take place.
-Frost Raiders of Nephilidia
You are a raiders in insectlike, jewel-eyed, insulated masks investigating the cold half-drowned land of Nephilida, with its various amphibious vampires, from the black-armored knights to the decadent Queen herself. Dare you take the jewel from the demon's eyes? Rules for the special gear of the raiders and the Nephilidian tarot.
-War Magic
Every player rolls a 20th level magic-user, they are each randomly placed in a small but lovingly-detailed kingdom, you have to try to kill each other and the last wizard standing wins.
-PurgePurgePurge
Near-future city, target, sewer system, codes and access nodes, cool motorcycle, optional cybernetic enhancements, floorplan, DNA, AI, betrayal, eldritch wild-card let loose. Trouble, broken glass, neon, darkness.
-Death Before During And After Dishonor
Samurai wargame. Use your house's resources to build your army including yokai summoned with LotFP spells, fight on a little battlefield designed just for this, each player is the general of a chosen section of army. Timetables of the movements of the enemy revealed when its time or when your spies find out.
-The Garden of Forking Paths
A mazelike dungeon. One PC, several players. Control of the PC starts with the first player. Each time the PC decides to go this way instead of that a second identical version of the PC controlled by the next player makes the other choice. This continues until there as many identical PCs as players, all making different choices. They cannot meet or retrace their steps, but they must still work together with their alternate selves to survive and solve the maze.
-Claw of the Annihilator
No-self-control high-dark-fantasy mini-adventure. PCs play max-level dragonriders, archliches, archers with nine-arms and 4 bows, that kind of thing. They challenge the gods on a uniquely-designed alien terrain with a full minigolf course worth of chaotic effects.
-Meaningless Homicidal Loci of Suffering
A player-vs-player where each player gets a PC and a section of the dungeon to control. They decide which monsters are there, which traps where, etc. Their PC can only travel in the other players' parts of the dungeon. Dungeon and options for each section provided, natch.
*I left out a lot of ideas that might fall under "modern horror" because basically they were already within the remit of Demon City.
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26 comments:
@trafalgar blow
It's against the rules to promote the work of abusers and John Harper is a proven abuser. So, comment erased.
@trafalgar blow
Me, for one.
Since at least 2012, Harper has been an aggressive online abuser.
The first time I heard his name was here in this thread:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191117215223/http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/15862/history-of-gaming-confessions-of-a-dungeon-master/p1
...where you can see him--and a significant chunk of the narrative-gamer clique to which he belongs--being incredibly abusive. It just escalated from there.
And I googled John Harper and I read about the pastor who died on Titanic and it was enlightening.
Some of these look very promising, and I do like the kind of book where you can pick a monster and a brief buildiup to an adventure and an ability and use it easily, like my favourite original GURPS Creatures of the Night.
@trafalgar blow
Oh that's not the full extent of it, he later went on to full-on lying about felonies, that's merely the beginning.
But in that argument I link he was trolling. He admitted it--he used that word.
And you know that trolling is abuse, right tb?
Promoting an artist's art benefits the artist, though. In general.
@traflgar blow
That stock phrase hides a lot of different issues underneath it:
It's very different if the artist is alive to benefit from you propagating awareness of their work.
If he were dead, it'd be a different issue.
If this conversation weren't public, it'd be a different issue.
But if someone decides to give that abuser money because they heard about it from you, then you're morally responsible for making easier for the abuser to commit abuse. They got paid--directly or indirectly--because of you.
So, abstract phrases about art and artist don't address that direct moral responsibility.
@trafalgar blow
1. I don't know anything about the "guy who invented computers" (by your estimation, lots of people claim that title) or what they did or didn't do. It would be grotesque to just assume they did something as bad as tried to frame a rival for a felony.
2. It isn't about USING a thing it's about PROMOTING it--hugely different thing
3. My ability to affect Harper through my actions is vastly different than my ability to influence a large brand name or world-changing invention. Scale and how impactful you are is a big deal. People who have never ever heard of a given Harper product might hear of it via your posts, whereas anyone reading this knows computers
4. Nobody is hearing D&D exists for the first time via my blog and people who read it are well aware that "D&D" doesn't necessarily mean a specific product made by some specific douche that puts money in that specific douche pocket.
5. There are always trade-offs in moral calculus. If someone were to go without a computer in the modern era they'd have a variety of pretty severe life problems. If they go without a Harper game, not so much.
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The downside of mentioning a hatemob guy's work here (material aid to an abuser) vastly outweighs the upside (someone might or might not be entertained).
@trafalgar
-"by mentioning his name it's already a promotion of his product"
They don't know which product or what you said about it. Plus I can erase this entire conversation once it's done. Unfortunately this is the only way to talk to you since your identity and contact info are secret. I judge communicating the information to you takes precedence, so I am saying what I need to in order to do that.
-"a "hatemob" isn't neutralized by your weird blog censorship"
Nor is Trump "neutralized" by me not voting for him--evne if I'm not all-powerful I'm still not going to _help an abuser .
And failing to publish someone on a private platform isn't "censorship".
That's like saying not allowing literally anyone to publish an article in your newspaper, without curating the good writers, is somehow "censorship." This blog (including the comments section) is for good, true and useful things, not for spreading misinformation or helping abusers.
-"and they are both bad for everyone involved."
Of course not:
Failing to promote an abuser's work is a good here with no downside at all. Like the whole preventing "shouting fire in a crowded room".
You can't describe a _bad outcome_ to harmful speech being prevented in this outlet. You can refer to stock phrases, but you can't actually describe a bad thing happening to real people because you can't promote an abuser.
Dang, "Red and Pleasant War" sounds like an amazing addition to AR&PL. Would play the fuck out of it.
Mm, I think it's a problem Blogger had for a while now, I can't log in to comment on my own blog or some others. Haven't been a problem for this one yet, though. No idea how to fix it.
@trafalgar blow
1. you’re provably wrong:
if me not voting for Trump “neutralized
“ him, he would never have been president.
please address that glaring flaw in your logic before we continue.
2."but internet feuds, they benefit nobody. not those involved, and even less those who are not involved."
There's 2 problems here
2a. Defining this person lying about rape (et al) as an "internet feud" has the connotation of a petty 2-sided argument about something silly rather than what it is: Thsi game designer took part in a misinformation campaign that materially cost another human being 5 years of his life, his entire livelihood, and did so much professional and personal damage that basically the only alternative to fixing it is suicide. The fact that this was done _via the internet_ rather than in person isn't releavant
2b. Obviously resolving this would benefits lots of people
-people uninvoved don't accidentally give money to an abuser
-the victim gets justice and a shot at fixing the problem the perpetrator created
2c. If it's not pushed to the point where it's resolved, that's not on me--I can only advocate for the best case position: stop helping my abuser and create consequences for the abuse.
3. As for mentioning my abuser: you are not describing any benefit to helping people to make the free choice to do something terrible like give my abuser money. That’s like saying literally every advertisement anyone has ever invented should be on every platform everyone has ever invented because everyone needs the choice of whether to buy Sprite.
Instead of repeating stoc phrases: make an argument someone innocent is _harmed_ by not allowing you to advertise the abuser.
@trafalgar blow
You've raised some issues and they were addressed several days ago.
Please leave a comment either saying "Ok, I understand and agree" or explaining why you don't. You've had 48 hours post-holiday, you've got 48 more.
@anon
sorry no anonymous comments allowed
@trafalgar blow
1. Your claim was:
Zak: """Nor is Trump "neutralized" by me not voting for him"
TB: "yes he is. you voting for someone else directly results in trump not being the president."
Do you grasp that the vote totals for both California and every state indicate that my vote was not the deciding vote and therefore your claim is not true?
Please type "yes" or "no" in response to this. If the answer is "no" you can elaborate but type "no" first so I understand.
2a. "While I understand the severity of the situation you're describing, calling it an "internet feud" might be a bit dismissive."
Good. Glad you grasp this.
2a-1. "it's worth considering that online disputes often lack the context and nuance that real-life interactions provide."
Obviously but not relevant in any way here since the damage the hatemonger we are discussing committed extends to the real world. If you're saying its not good to raise the stakes this high based on something you read on the internet and didn't investigate before attacking then this is a comment you should direct at the aggressor who did that, not me. He is reachable.
2b. " Sure, resolving the issue would benefit many people, "
so then you're admitting your claim--
"but internet feuds, they benefit nobody. not those involved,"
is false?
Please type yes or no. If the answer is "no" you can elaborate but type "no" first so I understand.
2b-1. "It's important to assess the feasibility and potential consequences of pursuing justice in each case."
Obviously already assessed. This action (disallowing advertising the hatemonger in spaces I have responsibility for) has some very minor chance of an upside and zero downside. That assessment was carried out long before you showed up thus: the policy.
2c. You are still not describing any -benefit- to helping people to helping people the free choice to do something terrible like give my abuser money. You are just referring to abstractions.
That's like saying people should be free to yell "Fire" in my crowded theatre because freedom without describing any benefit to yelling "Fire" in my crowded theatre. You are referring to a principle but not describing what benefit it provides in this current real actual situation.
People accept billions of free speech exceptions because the person asking for that exception can describe harm it would cause (spam and misinformation for example) in order to overcome that you must describe a _benefit_ to the contested speech act.
Again I will ask for the last time:
In the response you type, describe a BENEFIT to allowing this harmful act instead of just repeating stock phrases. I will help "The upside to this particular speech act on this specific platform, -in addition- to reminding people of abstract phrases about free speech and freedom generally, is that while it runs the risk of enabling a terrible thing it also...."
also -what?-
@trafalgar blow
In order to save time for readers, you were asked to answer "yes" or "no" about whether you are still holding to your false claim.
You didn't do that, which indicates you either completely lack empathy for people reading (who's time you're wasting by refusing to be clear) or lack rationality (you are not intelligent enough to understand the request and the reason for it).
Further, you were asked for an upside to your requested course of action, you didn't and instead wrote a platitude.
Again: you either completely lack empathy for people reading (who's time you're wasting by refusing to be clear) or lack rationality (you are not intelligent enough to understand the request and the reason for it).
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If through self-reflection or therapy you learn the requisute empathy for others or become rational enough to answer questions you are asked, you may apologize and be allowed to interact here.
Until that time, there is no benefit to anyone to allow you to publish your claims here.
Still thinking about what The Stars My Lamentation inspires.
An "Escape from the Gouffre Martel"-like heist adventure could be interesting. You need to bust someone out of a maximum security fantasy prison. As soon as you're half-way in, another prisoner tries to escape and meddles with your plan. And there's a Philosopher someone in the prison who's using the prisoners for his own goals.
Like Count of Monte Christo, only with magic and you're trying to break in while Dantès is trying to break out.
A Red and Pleasant War sounds like an amazing addition.
Once upon a time in hell. Probably my favorite of this list. I would sprinkle it with some "sentient guns with soul or demon bullets"
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