October 15

October 2015 Blog Carnival: What Walks Into Town

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This month the host is Scot Newbury of Dice and Dragons .

It’s been a few months since I wrote for the carnival and when October rolls around I seem to have a dozen or so ideas rattling around in my skull which is the perfect thing for this months carnival.

Picture the scene, a small 1950s town in California where things seem to be perfectly normal on the outside but beneath the town has a dark underside.  The residents go about their daily lives blissfully unaware that in a few days a time traveller will appear that will set a chain of events in motion which if unchecked threaten to unravel the fabric of space and time firstly by killing the family and friends of this stranger;  then slowly erasing the whole world from existence.

Our time traveller finds himself stranded in his new time, his time machine requires a specialised fuel to power it and that is something that is very hard to come by in the 1950s.  If there is one thing in his favour is that when he landed he did so at the edge of town so his arrival goes largely unnoticed by the general population; the only contact he has is with a deranged farmer who was convinced he came from outer space to eat his brain.

Also, since he has travelled through time and not space he can blend in with only a few odd looks from the locals, his clothing is slightly different and made from an advanced fabric, he speaks in a strange slang which is unknown to the good people.  Conversely there are things here that are alien to him;  auto-mobiles are very low tech and all appear to be stick shift and not the automatic vehicles from his home time.  People gather at the bandstand to listen to music being played, this structure has a very different use in his time; this is very much the era of live music, the theatre and going to school dance; even getting a simple shave or h.aircut can be entertaining with a quartet of barbers to hand.

After a chance encounter with a friend from his own time he is made aware that every interaction he has causes ripples that subtly alter the time-line around him; he has become like a butterfly flapping his wings here and a storm occurring over there.  A second accidental encounter means he meets his own parents and must atone for the damage he has caused to their relationship or else the aforementioned doom will befall him.

All the while he wanders he has knowledge of what is to come, maybe not to all the residents of this sleepy town but there are a few important people here and there with an important part to play in the future of this town.   So our poor traveller stuck in his past must tread a fine line or risk upsetting the cosmic apple cart.

Note.

When I wrote this I was going to reveal the identity of the traveller as it is based on someone but then I realised that it would spoil the set-up of the mysterious stranger and this would no longer be What Walks Into Town but Who Walks Into Town. So take what I have given you, change it if you will and use your own time traveller rather than mine.

I won’t stop you having a guess if you want in the comments below but even if you guess right; I won’t publicly acknowledge it.

Category: horror, Modern, RPG, sf, Time Travel | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 7

Top 10 rpg list: Number 1 – Over the Edge

Mandatory Disclaimer

The GM should read the following statement before and after every session of Over the Edge.

“All references to vices and to the supernatural contained in this game are for entertainment purposes only. Over the Edge™ does not promote satanism, belief in magic, drug use, violence, sexual deviation, body piercing, cynical attitudes toward the government, freedom of expression, or any other action or belief not condoned by the authorities.”

Over the Edge is probably one of the most unusual in my collection and unlike some of the other top ten entries I can’t place where I first heard about it, which is unusual for me.  I do know exactly where I bought it from; the Virgin games store in Central London, I’m not saying I have a photographic memory but I left the price tag on it.  Since it was a game I did try to play with some of the members of the Critical Miss gaming society when I bought it I can hazard a guess that it was about 1992 when I purchased it.

I was amazed by how free form character creation was, no fixed attributes rather you defined your own traits; this caused a little difficultly among the group as this was a radical idea and we didn’t know how to proceed.  Not so much a radical idea these days as other indie games have taken to going down the route of allowing you to define your own traits.

The System.

You need nothing more than a few d6 to accomplish your task, either against a fixed difficulty or in the case of an opposed roll the highest number wins.

The Background.

This was the main draw for me, the wonderfully detailed island setting of Al Amarja, a place of cults, cultists, conspiracies, fringe powers, magic, the post office and other things man was not meant to know or understand.  I’d love to write about the rich tapestry to play with but I don’t want to spoil it for any potential players that have yet to explore the vivid game world or experience the weird and unusual.  I know you can certainly search for other pages relating to the background but you’re not going to find anything here.

One idea I am still toying with is to get a game up and going but have the island adopt the swinging 60s setting of British culture; with all the classic tropes thrown in for good measure.  Maybe some sort of Avengers style vibe mixed with Prisoner, Danger Man and Smiley’s people?

In Play.

In the end I got one or two evenings play out of the book.  The party had gathered at the Al Amarja airport and was walking through the depature lounge when I was just describing the general goings on including an announcement over the tannoy for Mr. Jones to pick up the white courtesy phone; I was unprepared for what happened when one of the group picked up the white phone and introduced himself as Mr. Jones.  If at that time I had been more of an experienced GM I could have certainly run with it and perhaps sent the players off into the seedier side of the island but I panicked and the outcome was a little predictable and the party went back to leaving the airport.

Conclusion.

I’d certainly recommend going and finding a copy of this almost forgotten gem just for the weirdness of it, the aforementioned background and the vast open ended sandbox nature.

 

Over The Edge can be found here at the home page of Atlas Games

Category: horror, Modern, RPG | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 24

Steve Stone’s Zero

I picked this game up as I was a fan of the biomechanical art style made famous by the late H.R Giger and this little book seemed to be my sort of game.

Two things struck me about the book, the first was its size as it was much smaller than an ordinary game book and full glossy colour; the second thing was that it was expensive, I guess that full colour glossy art came with a premium price.  Despite these details I bought it, read it and admired the artwork before losing it as the small book just vanished.  So I write this overview from memory.

The background for the game itself was promising, all characters belonged to a hive mind and operated together for the good of the  Equanimity.  Even though you were all relatively equal you all conformed to one of the few roles that existed within this community.

The game was almost like playing the Borg from Star Trek, even naming your character involved rolling a handful of d6s and that was your “name”, you could allocate the digits however you wanted to.  I also recall the interesting skill system; you could determine the number of skills you had and the more of a Jack of All trades you were the harder it was for you to accomplish a task.

Moving beyond character creation and into the story of the game.  An event happens which severs your characters from this hive mind and you suddenly have to cope with being alone, an individual lost in their thoughts and unable to reconnect to the Equanimity; worse still, the queen wants you dead and devotes time and effort trying to hunt you down for termination.

There were a couple of supplements printed for it but they became hard to find and the meta-plot died with the game line, which is a shame as this little gem had so much going for it.

Version 2.

I understand that as a result of Lester Smith’s successful Kickstarter for his d6xd6 core rpg, Zero will once more live again and I can’t wait to see the results.

If you want to see this new game then please click here http://www.d6xd6.com/ and have a look.

Category: Cyberpunk, RPG, sf | LEAVE A COMMENT